Nexus
by HappyLeif
Summary: When Danny is injured and desperate and backed into a corner in every sense of the phrase, Clockwork passes him the reins. Time is weird and getting weirder.
1. All These Things That I've Done

The chapter titles and introductory quotes in this story come from songs. Feel free to listen to them while reading! I spent a ton of thought picking ones that fit tonally with each chapter. Some inspiration was drawn for this story from Donnie Darko and Cowboy Bebop, so keep that in mind as you prepare for this rollercoaster through time and space.

Oh, and please keep your arms inside the car at all times. Thank you and enjoy the ride.

* * *

 **. . .**

 **All These Things That I've Done**

 **. . .**

 _I've got soul but I'm not a soldier._

(The Killers, 2004)

 **. . .**

Behind Danny the double doors of the library splinter. He drains a sip from the last dregs of his energy to force his body to do something which is normally easy for itㅡto slip into the space between atoms, intangible and untouchable one more time. He flickers, and knows with a cold sinking certainty that it will be the last time he pulls this trick until his energy reserve is back up above the Dangerously Low line. Flecks of painted wood fly (through the space where his body is supposed to be) into the dark vaulted hall, and one thought rattles in Danny's head like the marble left in an empty can of spray paint. The end, the end, the end.

He only has so much in him.

The doors splinter again. The crack rends through silence and echoes through empty rooms back and forthㅡgunshots glancing off towers of shelves. So much for the respect of public property. How many times have they accused _him_ of unlawful destruction? Damned double standards. Damned everything.

Wood tears sickeningly. Every eighth hanging fluorescent has been left on and, when they all shake as one, dust comes swimming down into the narrow channels of light. He's never been truly fearful of his parents but he feels fear now, and stumbles onward. Taking the first unlocked door he finds, he barrels through it. Here he hits a flight of stairs that spirals upward four stories.

"For fuck's sake," he complains under his breath. His luck. Couldn't he have found the elevator?

Despite the racking pain in his ribs he plunges ahead. His company is the soles of his shoes slapping the steps, the steady drip drip dripping of ectoplasm down his arm onto the swirled marble. This library is one of the oldest buildings in Amity. Beneath him it sounds like those old creaking doors have finally given way.

When he was young he and Jazz and Mom and Dad would get into hide-and-go-seek tournaments that lasted hours. It always came down to harrowing chases in the endㅡwho could get back to home base without getting caught when their hiding spot was found. Jazz would always scream out if she thought her pursuer was closing in, if she thought she wouldn't make it in time. It was against the rules but she would scream anyway. She would always scream.

 _Time out!_

Danny clutches the railing as a wave of nausea sweeps him upside-down. One summer he almost drowned at the beach when a retreating wave sucked him out to sea. He pushes away the memory like a plate of cold peas. The injury and the exertion are beginning to leave him weak and distracted and sick. As a ghost, nausea is something he rarely feels. But he feels it now.

He looks down at his hands, the green spatters outweighing the white of the fabric. He rips his gloves off; the fizzle, their particles decaying and scattering into the stale air. His hands are too solid. One foot moves in front of the other but he feels unspeakably distant from them. Detached. An outside observer. It all seems wrong.

"You're at a dead end!"

Danny trips, catching himself on the rounded oak banister again.

He chances one haphazard look over the railing and sees his parents standing at the bottom of the two stories he's climbed, framed and furious in the circle of steps, each with their weapon of choice slung over their shoulder. Jazz is screaming in two clashing memories. _Time out._

His father speaks again, bass booming up toward the faraway ceiling, thunder from the wrong direction. "Give it up, ghost, we've got a shield all around the library."

"Oh, so I should come quietly?" Danny sneers, then falls into a fit of coughing. "Don'tㅡthink so." Faster than ever he resumes his ascent. Ectoplasm falls, fat drops marking his path upward, and his mind fleetingly likens them to breadcrumbs. _At least I'll be able to find my way back._

The third floor is where the rows and rows of encyclopedias are stacked, where the medical volumes as heavy as children gather dust, where they shove the books published by professors that were only ever read by their students. Where the university slackers come to pull all-nighters before finals, studying all the articles they forgot to read. Where the A students spend the prime of their youth. There's no one here now, of course, as it closes early during the summer. There must be a Jazz-shaped ass print in one of these empty chairs.

 _Jazz._

Danny stops short, leaning on a table for support. This is all his fault. He should have gotten there sooner, should have protected her better. Should've been faster, should've hit harder… Shoulda woulda coulda. The guilt gropes at his heart like an icy fist but he knows he can't let it cripple him. The voices of his three closest friends are in the back of his mind, angrily insisting, " _This wasn't your fault!"_ That's what they'd say if they were here. A small part of him can believe it, too. But his parents?

"Stop, Jack. It's somewhere on this floor."

The cold lasso of guilt morphs into the red hot reigns of adrenaline. A few thoughts whip through his head in rapid succession as the elongated shadows of his parents ooze across the floor from the entryway.

 _Can I escape this?_ _ㅡ_ _Injured. Powers are shot. Three floors up. They're blocking the exit!_

 _Call for backup?_ _ㅡ_ _They're with Jazz. Why don't I have more friends?_

 _Who else? Valerie?_ _ㅡ_ _Must be desperate to have an idea that terrible._

 _Tell them the truth, then?_ _ㅡ_ _Situation too tense. Wouldn't believe me. Wrong time._

 _So what the hell can I do?_

Danny grinds his teeth and presses his back flat against the nearest bookshelf. He's been in much hairier situations, much more life threatening, but he's never felt quite as SOL as he does in this moment. This is one problem he won't be able to punch or lie his way out of.

"Come out now and we won't have to harm you," Maddie says slowly, and the way the words drag on as they leave her lips rouses some serious doubts.

So Danny slides left along the bookcase, keeping a sharp eye on the shrinking shadows. A protruding book strikes his shoulder and tumbles noisily down his armㅡhe barely manages to catch it before it hits the floor. The shadows stop. Danny holds his breath. A single drop of luminescent green that has been making its way down his jawline falls toward the bookㅡ

ㅡand stops.

The drop is poised in stark defiance of gravity an inch from the cover. Startled, Danny drops the book. But it too sticks in the air, like someone has taken epoxy and cemented together all the atoms in the room. Tentatively he reaches out to poke it where it hovers. It budges only slightly, sinking an inch closer to the ground as if through hardening syrup.

It clicks, then. "Clockwork?"

"Hello again." The familiar voice precedes his old friend's entrance, down through the ceiling.

Danny collapses backwards against the shelf in relief. "I don't think I've _ever_ been gladder to see you! Okay, except that one timeㅡ"

"I am not here to help you escape." As he says this his countenance shrinks, his wrinkles and veins fading into the smooth skin of youth, his robe hanging looser and looser.

Danny pauses with his mouth hanging open. "But I… I mean, I could just walk out right now. While they're frozen." He peeks around the corner at his parents. He knows he shouldn't feel this ominous sense of foreboding when he looks at his own family. But he does. He does.

"Danny, time is… a strange thing."

 _Sigh._ "So you've said." Maybe he could just turn and run. Would Clockwork drag him back just to make whatever point it was that he felt he had to make?

"We've arrived at a nexus."

"Nexus?"

"A crossroads of sorts. A divergence."

"So… What. Am I about to die?" Danny deadpans.

Clockwork regrows from a child into a young adult, and Danny is hit with a strange sense of déjà vu as the ghost of time looks him in the eyes in a rare moment of sharing his exact height. "You must take what I'm about to say very seriously."

Danny swallows. He can only nod, and press his hand back to his side to staunch the trickle of blood.

"The flow of time is ruled by cause and effect. Each event that happens causes every event that comes after it to happen. Some events cause next to nothing, and some cause more than others. From some causes stem so many possible effects that they can change the entire course of the river. Your accident in the portal was one such event. There were a hundred thousand alternate timelines where you never went inside, a million more where you died, countless others where your transformation took on a different nature… Are you following?"

Danny waves him off and gives a slack nod. "Don't mind me, just bleeding out over here."

"You won't be for long," Clockwork says, catching Danny's attention. "In every possible outcome of this event your injury is dealt with soonㅡthough the manner varies drastically."

Danny's hand is wet with blood and he wipes it off on his suit before putting it back. "Depending on what?"

"On you."

 _Figures._

"I will not sugarcoat this. The rest of your life depends heavily upon the direction this evening turns. Your actions tonight will decide the diaspora of your life, your relationship with your parents from here forward, with your sister, with your friends. Your health, both mental and physical, your longevity, the longevity of everyone you know, their lives, their happiness. Everything pivots around this night."

"Oh boy, and here I was worried!" Danny barks, slapping his forehead in a fit of hysterical laughter. "Thanks for the tip. I'll be sure to keep the butterfly effect in mind while I'm getting shot to death."

"Yes, there are potential futures where you are shot."

"Thank you, Captain Helpfulㅡ"

"But there are others where you are _not."_ Clockwork goes on, completely unphased by Danny's vitriolic reaction. "There is an optimal future. But you will have to compromise for it, Danny. You will have to compromise an aspect of yourself that you hold dear."

"Think you could stand to be a little more cryptic?" Danny spits sarcastically. "I'm catching on a smidge too quickly here."

"You will have to play the game."

...The game? What game? "But I don't…"

"Play the game, Danny. The rest will follow."

Danny looks up but Clockwork is gone. That heavy feeling is gone too, and abruptly the book falls from the air. He barely manages to catch itㅡjust in time for the single drop of glowing ectoplasm to splash onto the book's gold trimmed leather cover, directly into the capital 'A' in its title on the spine.

 _The Art of War_

Sun Tzu

He's never read it, but in that instant he suddenly wishes he has. _Bet Vlad's read it,_ he thinks bitterly. There's probably an entire chapter on manipulating the enemy.

"We will find you," Jack says to the room. "You might as well give up." Hatred stains every syllable. "Save yourself the trouble." Danny knows exactly why they're so eager to find him tonight. _(Jazz, screaming.)_ Danny shudders. She's okay. She has to be.

But he's not ready to go down yet. He's an animal backed into a corner, and any animal does desperate things in times like these. _(Play the game.)_ Danny knows all at once what Clockwork meant.

A little piece of Danny Fenton dies right there by the bookcaseㅡa tiny piece he's hung onto desperately since the beginning of all this ghost businessㅡwhen he sacrifices the voice in his heart that insists he never become like Vlad, that he never play people for his own gain, especially people he loves. Some noble old-fashioned part of him always believed he could overcome without stooping that low. Not anymore. The voice silences itself as Danny lifts a wet, green finger to the inside of the cover of _The Art of War_ and writes.

 _wasn't my fault_

With that done he sets the open book on the ground and sneaks away to round the corner before they spot him. Then, taking the biggest leap of faith into his own dumb plan he's ever had to take, Danny reaches down the familiar dark well where his heart should be, all the way to the distant water, that faintest trickle of life. He plunges headfirst into it and out the other side.

With nothing but a bookshelf separating him from his parents, Danny reverts back to human.

White light scatters across the shelves, etching blocky shadows on the walls, refracting off the green glass lamp shades on the tabletops, turning the room into a three-second kaleidoscope. The blinding slice of pain that comes with the sudden return of human nerve endings (pain is _so_ much more acute when he's human) sends spots swirling in Danny's vision, blending with the blind patches left by the bright flash of his transformation. It's so disorienting that he almost doesn't hear his mom shushing his dad.

"ㅡyou see that flash?"

"What was that?"

"Jack, it's disappeared from the radar!"

"But it can't have gotten pastㅡ"

"Jack."

The sound of ruffling paper tells him they've found it. Bingo. Her voice is much louder when she addresses Danny directly. "It doesn't matter whether you directly harmed our daughter." A low thud as the book hits the floor again. "You were there. You were involved."

 _You're responsible,_ he hears. Like always.

They round the corner at the end of the shelf into the local history section but Danny's already moved onto the next row, leaving behind another message. Appealing to their curiosity feels like luring deer with salt. He feels like a slimeballㅡlike Vlad. He's no longer sure at all this is what Clockwork meant. It feels wrong. It's not _him_. But there's no questioning that this is working. This time there's a longer pause when the book is picked up from the carpet, and Danny knows his parents must be puzzling over the now inexplicably red writing with increasing curiosity.

 _trying to help like always_

 _doesnt always work out_

At this point his parents fall into inaudible whispers. He uses the free moment to try and calm his hammering heart. _Keep it together. The faster you beat the faster we lose blood, buddy…_

Before his parents can come to an agreement he pushes himself upright and scrawls a message onto the endcap of the bookshelf. It's brighter here, indirectly under one of the emergency overhead lights, and he can see white glistening in the crimson ink. It feels macabre writing in his own blood, but hey, it's not like he's using it for anything else.

He grins as he writes this one. If he hasn't already snared them, he has now.

 _bet ur wondering bout the red_

 _stay tuned to find out_

Then he dances away, barely making it around the next corner before his parents occupy the space where he'd been seconds ago. If his parents see him like this it's game over. He can almost feel that direction physicallyㅡthe _bend_ in the river Clockwork mentions so frequently. He can sense a waterfall at the end of that route and doesn't need Clockwork to tell him he needs to steer clear.

"Mads, I think it's toying with us."

"What game are you playing, ghost?" _The most dangerous one._ Her accusation becomes a demand. "How do you _do_ that?"

She has to be talking about his little disappearing act from her scanner. He scribbles a message onto the next bookshelf before clambering his way up the side, sidestepping protruding encyclopedias as he nears the top. He chances a peek over the edge of the towering shelf when he hears his parents coming up on his next bit of text.

 _if you want to know_

 _put down your guns_

"Fat chance! Think you'll catch us with our guard down?"

"We're not that stupid," Maddie adds, sounding insulted.

"I only want to _talk!"_ Danny yells back before realizing his mistake. Their heads whip upward and he barely rolls out of their line of sight. Then he's off, sprinting along the top of the shelf as large chunks of wood are blown away behind him, incinerated in a haze of acrid smoke. His hair brushes along the glass underbellies of darkened hanging lights. As he comes up on a lit one he panics and does what he does best.

(Punches its lights out.)

Sparks fly and shards of glass rain down onto the roof of the shelf, covering the fabric of his tattered red converse, slipping into the laces. He's so sick of running. This half-baked plain of his is backfiring with a helluva bang. If he starts veering dangerously down one of the infinite wrong paths, will Clockwork show up and steer him right? _Shouldn't count on it. Always gotta do everything myself._

"Why won't you just listen?"

"We don't negotiate with ghosts."

They're standing at the base some twenty feet below, aiming their guns upward with startling synchronicity. He can barely see and hopes it's the same for them.

"Aren't you curious?" he pleads. "How I do it?" Maybe appealing to their curiously _isn't_ enough to stay their wrath. Danny looks at his dad while he says it, his lovable oaf of a father who's always been the weaker of the two when it comes to giving in to curiosity. True to Danny's hope, he begins to lower his weapon by a fraction of a degree.

But it isn't enough. There's the low whine of a charging weapon, the shrill rumble of combustion as his mother hikes hers farther onto her shoulder, goggles gleaming in the dark. "Of course we're curious. But we don't negotiate with ghosts. We don't need your cooperation to get our _answers."_ Her last word is strained and drowned as she squeezes the trigger.

This time Danny isn't prepared.

The blast hits the edge of the shelf just beneath his feet, ripping upward like green hellfire and sending him stumbling backward, scarcely out of harm's way. But the shelf is too narrow and he steps back onto nothing. He's falling, as if in slow motion, clutching at burning books as they flutter after himㅡrealizing just a millisecond before his back slams into paper thin carpet that the entire shelf is falling too. Then his lungs are 's nothing but white. Green. Ringing. Eardrums, loud. Head. Wrist. _Chest._ Blood surging inside out. _Crashing_ ㅡthe shelf is crashing into the shelf behind him and as his vision swims back into focus he registers that he's landed on his back in a narrow aisle three feet across that escaped being crushed. _Lucky day._

When the second shelf starts to tip with a creak like a shipwreck, Danny wonders which one of the total-fuckup, worst-case-scenario timestreams he's launched himself into.

"There he is," his mom calls out. Despite his balance and breath having not yet returned, he slips out from beneath the shelf and sprints away, racing the dominoing shelves as they crash one by one by one.

"Sorry, Clockwork," Danny mutters. In case he's listening. _Who am I kidding, of course he's listening._ "Never been very good at games." His hopes of enticing his parents into a fair conversation are dwarfed by the growing danger of actually dying. He's pretty sure he's lost nearly a half-gallon of blood by now. How much can a human lose before kicking the bucket, anyway? Three? Two? If his parents manage to hit him now, he's done for. Screw playing the game. Danny is getting the hell out of Dodge.

The last shelf buckles under the weight of all those before it and careens into the library wall. Windows shatter deafeningly and, several stories below, car alarms keen in protest. Paying no mind to the broken glass, Danny vaults onto the windowsill.

 _Enough energy left for a transformation. I can make it to that fire escape. It's only a dozen feet away. Then I can run down and escape the shield as a human before they can catch up…_

 _...And any hope I ever had to gain trust from my parents for Phantom is out the window with me._

Danny pauses, angry, desperate, white light crackling around his waist. Ready to spill across his body and transform him. But it doesn't travel. His grip on the windowsill tightens. _Why is this so hard?_ Broken glass digs into his hands, but the sting hardly touches his nerves. Everything is blurring, softening around the edges, growing lighter and darker and louder and louder and Danny can feel it again, stronger this time. That stupid river Clockwork never shuts up about. The infinite fractal tree, stemming onward from this point in time in every direction, forever and ever. And as he hangs poised here on the windowsill he blinks two eyelids heavier than a sun and when he opens them again he sees it.

A hair-thin string. A shimmer in the air, like that above a flame, barely distinguishable in the suburban night. As he watches it stretches out from his chest languidly, sentiently, tugging him toward the fire escape with the smallest of voices.

 _This way._

But as he looks on, frozen in fascination, he realizes there is a second, far fainter thread. This one twists around his chest. Unable to look away he twists around too, to watch it swim back into the room he's so desperately trying to flee. Only then does he realize that his parents are moving slowly. Their footfalls come only once every eon as they thunder toward him.

 _This way._

The gossamer thread shoots toward them and suddenly Danny knows what he has to do.

Matter lurches back into motion as Danny finally lets the light flash over him, blinding his parents as he transforms back. The whole room is twenty shades brighter with the aura radiating off his skin. But his parents recover quickly and before he can even step down from the window they're taking aim. His mind is blank. He blurts out the first thing he thinks of. "Time out!"

When they freeze he thinks for a moment that time has actually stopped.

But no. There's his father, cocking his head to the side, like a dog trying to figure out which direction a car is coming from. His mother raises her weapon, lowers it, and raises it again. But her finger is not on the trigger. It hits him. For the first time all night Danny has actually stumped them.

So he takes this golden opportunity of their mutual stunned silence to slide off the shards of broken glass and throw up his hands in surrender. To his credit, his voice is even when he steps forward. "I'll go with you."


	2. Fire on the Mountain

_._

 ** _. . ._**

 **Fire on the Mountain**

 **. . .**

 _If Mercy's in business, I wish it for you,_

 _more than just ashes when your dreams come true._

(Grateful Dead, 1978)

 **. . .**

In a dizzy rush of fluorescent swirling light and flying molecules of oxygen, Danny is ejected out of the thermos onto a harsh, cold surface. Noises and lights and abrasive sensory input assault him on all sides. But for a long while he lies drowning in it on the floor without processing at all. Being condensed into a container the size of a soup can always leaves him disoriented, and it will be awhile before his brain can filter anything besides the persistent, _ow, ow, ow._

An indeterminate amount of time passes.

When the lab slows to a more manageable rate (a slower form of that perpetual recursion of the same slanted spin which makes him feel like he's just stepped off a carnival ride) Danny finds he's finally able to keep his eyes open.

He is in the containment unit in his own basement. The last thing he remembers is his own final damning words. _I'll go with you._ Sitting up, his hands slip out from under him and he nearly passes out again when he lands on his injured side. _Great._ There's a still-growing puddle of ectoplasm beneath him. It means he must not have been out for long, because he hasn't yet bled out. There's still time to regret this idiotic decision. There's still time.

(He's starting to hate that word.)

"Maddie, it's awake." His dad is watching him carefully from a computer chair, holding his cellphone to his ear. After a pause he _hmms_ in acknowledgement and hangs up, immediately turning back to the computer screen, where he scrolls through dizzying charts and linear graphs.

How long has Danny been unconscious? He coughs. When his dad doesn't turn he coughs louder. "Jack," he finally calls out.

He spins in his chair and removes his reading glasses with an exasperated flair. "What?"

 _Don't be intimidated. Start off slow._ "I was wondering…" _Deep breaths._ "Jazz… Your daughter. Is she.. okay?"

In his hands Jack turns the glasses over and over, catching shimmers from the cage holding Danny prisoner. "Interesting…" he mumbles. When he turns back to the computer screen he opens up Notepad; Danny squints and manages to catch a bit. " _Subject continues charade even after capture."_

"It's not a charade!" Danny bursts. He's never been so angry in all his life. What is the point of all this—all this _timeline_ nonsense? There's no way there's _any_ timeline where his parents will change their minds. They'll never understand. Danny's only solace is that Jazz must be doing alright if his question failed to upset his dad.

After ten minutes of heated silence, the door at the top of the stairs bangs open. Jack rushes up the steps to meet his wife, where they converse in hushed whispers Danny can hardly make out.

" _...was the hospital?"_

" _...be discharged for… said she would have to…"_

" _...asked about her."_

"Oh really?" Maddie comes marching down the stairs, right up to the edge of the containment unit. The sides are glass but there are electrical currents running through it at 2-inch intervals, meaning if Danny phases through it he'll be electrocuted. Although, that's assuming he's capable of turning even his pinky finger intangible, which he's pretty sure he isn't right now. Looking at the thin currents suddenly reminds him of last night (or whenever it was). Of the gossamer threads. Of time. Of choices. "You asked about my daughter?" his mother demands.

"I want to know if she's okay," he replies. Clockwork's words float back to him. _There is an optimal future._ Danny doesn't have to create it from nothing, he merely has to find it. "I know you think my being a ghost condemns me, but try to remember that I was the one who saved her. Not you, not anyone else. I did that. Even got this neat souvenir for my efforts." Danny gestures disheartenedly at his side without looking. He doesn't want to know what it looks like now.

"Be that as it may," she says quickly, "she would never have been in danger at all if you hadn't brought that ghost fight into our own backyard."

Danny doesn't think anything he says could sway her from that view. He'd have to explain that the ghost was only here because _her son_ lives here, and that doesn't bear explaining quite yet. The thought makes him shudder. Instead he settles for being vague. "I can't answer for every ghost, Maddie. Just for me."

But she's already on the other side of the room, tinkering with some knobs on the backside of a machine Danny's seen but never known the purpose of. She doesn't seem to have heard him at all. Not for the first time, Danny wonders if his parents notice his ghost form has grown significantly in the last three years. If they notice his jawline is changing, his shoulders broadening… Although that would require they focus past the hazy glow that blurs his features, the fade that partially obscures him with his surroundings even in full tangibility, that radio buzz that hides his voice in tinny echo—they'd have to look far enough past it all to notice that which continually escapes them. (That he looks uncomfortably like their son.) When she pulls her goggles down over her eyes and brings out a hand drill his suspicion gets the better of him.

"What are you doing?"

No answer.

Danny crawls to the far side of the unit, putting as much space between him and them as possible. The lines running vertically down the crystal glass make him feel like a bird in an aviary, complete with the itch to fly when he can't. Suddenly the situation becomes insanely funny to him. "So.. what?" he drawls. He's balanced between terrified and amused as his mother slams around tools and equipment whose uses he's never bothered to learn, though he's seen them around the lab daily for years. "You gonna experiment on me now? Gonna give me an autopsy?" That word especially humors him. An autopsy. Ha. If he's gonna die then by jove he's gonna die laughing. "Get it," he chuckles, more to himself than them. "Autopsy."

Jack finally turns from the computer screen to appraise him again. "We're turning up the voltage, that's all." He turns back to his notes with a wounded hunch to his shoulders. "Like we could get any real work done with our little girl in the hospital."

"Ohhh," Danny sighs, ignoring the knife-twist in his gut at Jack's words. "So you're not planning on cutting me to bits until your personal affairs are all sorted out? That's good. I'd rather bleed to death anyway, so I win."

 _That_ catches their attention. Maddie actually stops what she's doing. "You're not bleeding to death."

"Really?" Danny looks down at the green smears that stretch from where he's sitting all the way to the far side of his cage. "Are you sure?" Maybe he _is_ imagining it. The dizziness and lightheadedness are starting to really scare him, and his breaths come shorter and tighter with each passing minute.

Jack eyes his wife like he knows exactly what she's about to say, but before he can even open his mouth she's throwing her tool down on the table. "Yes, I am sure. You're losing fluid but you won't die, ghost. You can't. That which is not alive _cannot_ die _._ "

That stings. Every word they say reminds him just how far he is from convincing them. "I may not be alive, but I'm sentient. Isn't that enough?" He feels he's living last night all over again, looking hopefully down at them with his own blood dripping from his fingertips onto the shelf. _Aren't you curious?_

"That's enough—No, Jack," she snaps as Jack stands to intercept her on her way over to the containment unit. She brushes him off, whipping her goggles off her head and thrusting them into his hands. "No, this has gone on long enough. It's _this_ kind of talk that got Jazz injured in the first place. This kind of deluded thinking, that it's something that it's not. You may walk like us and talk like us but you are not like us," Maddie whispers venomously. Danny struggles to stand on the far side of the unit, feeling oddly exposed under her stare. "When will you accept it? Ghosts _aren't_ sentient!" Maddie all but shouts. Her frustration seems to finally have gotten the better of her.

"What makes you so sure? Where does this unwavering faith come from?" He lurches forward, feeling the lab sway beneath them. An inch of glass is all that separate their noses, and Danny stares her down with equal intensity.

"A lifetime of research," she insists, gesturing wildly at the lab in general as if it alone is evidence enough to prove Danny wrong. "The lifetimes of dozens of researchers who came before us."

"You think you're the first scientist who poured their life into a theory only to be proven wrong in one way or another? Ever heard of Ptolemy? Einstein?" He sorely hopes she interrupts him now because he can't think of any more examples.

"You're pushing your luck, ghost."

Danny leans away from the glass, running his hand along his jaw in exasperation. "Ha! And there you go. Every once in a while I say something that rings just a little too true, and you fall back on that word like a safety net. You just call me _ghost_ like I'm some kind of insect. As if calling me that is going to make what I'm saying any less _true_."

Maddie narrows her eyes and plows on as if she hasn't heard the last part. "You're not an insect, though. You're not even in the same class as insects."

"Oh good," Danny mocks, "now I've been demoted to 'lesser than bugs.' And here I thought I was being groomed for a promotion."

Maddie's hands fly to her hips and her face calms from visible frustration into an eerie blank slate; it's a familiar sign that she is well and truly angry and Danny instantly sobers, wondering if he's taken it too far. She is forcing herself back into 'cool and detached unbiased scientist' mode. Her voice is heavy and colorless when she speaks again, like the sky when the rain hasn't yet made up its mind whether to fall or keep to the clouds. "No. You are not lesser than bugs. Ghosts don't fit on a scale with living beings. You're not a being at all. You're the recorded echo of someone's memory, and that's it."

"Is that so? Have you ever tried to talk to your own echo? Usually comes back exactly as you said it. Never quite as stimulating a conversation as the ones you and I have, can't deny that—"

"You call this stimulating?"

"Well, you're still talking to me."

"God only knows why," Jack drones from the computer as he goes on pouring over the continuous stretch of paper that's printing whatever readings they're managing to get off him. "You're only antagonizing it, Mads."

Danny's nose twitches. "I'm not an it," he spits. "The least you could do is pretend to respect me. I'm a he, okay? HE. Person, here," he repeats loudly, pointing to his face, "not an inanimate object." He turned his glare on his mother, who has sunk predictably back into her well-practiced look of pitying condescension. A wave of intense nausea washes over him and his knees buckle. The floor reintroduces itself to his hands and for a moment Danny is sure he's going to chuck. Instead he manages to sit back on his haunches, working quick shallow breaths into his tired lungs. "Oh wait, let me guess," he hisses saccharinely, "recorded echoes of someone's memory aren't allowed to have that now either."

Maddie purses her lips, in the impatient way a mother does when her child asks for the hundredth time in a row, _but why?_ Danny thinks to himself: _and here comes the 'because I said so.'_

"Well, no," she says shortly. "Ghosts don't have any traits of that kind whatsoever. There are only electrical pulses dictated by energy levels, which in turn dictate chemical reactions and—"

" _Listen!"_ Danny shouts. His arm is pressed to his ribs now. He wishes he'd had the wherewithal when he woke up to make some kind of a makeshift bandage. The lab is spinning again and it's clear he's coming up fast on the point of no return. It's do or die. "That's _great_ and all but it's neither here nor there! The fact of the matter is the oil that keeps me chugging is leaking out onto your floor." He blinks and the world blinks with him. "Alive or dead or insect or whatever…" The hard edges in the lab are fuzzy and he has trouble making out his parents in the mess of color. He's not sure he's still talking, but if he is, he says, "S'all... moot. I'm here. I exist. But if I don't get help soon 'm gonna _stop_ existing. Simple as that," he mumbles. "To be or not to be." Hamlet's dilemma is finally starting to resonate with him, five semesters too late. If only Lancer were here to cry tears of joy.

Her words are cold but this time he expects them. "And why should we care?"

 _Yeah, Danny. Why should they care_?

He puts his weight back on his forearms _(when did he end up on his back?)_ and watches himself stand. Hears himself talk. Hears himself assert a thousand different reasons why they should care. But nothing is happening and he's still on the floor and they're still waiting for his answer. Danny coughs and this time when he hastily wipes his hand across his chin, instead of green it comes away red. The truth is a hot coal burning in his gut. This is it. This is another one of those moments.

What did Clockwork call it?

 _Nexus._

When he opens his mouth to respond to his mother he sees them again, and it's even more flooring than the first time. He hasn't even been sure it'd happened until now, hell, he still isn't convinced he's not hallucinating from the blood loss. A thousand infinitely thin threads tangle in the air between them, rolling upward like ink into water. How is he ever supposed to pick the right one out from the chaos? He clutches at his side and coughs again. The threads shake and redefine, some vanishing forever and endless others slicking out from between atoms to take their place.

 _Why should they care?_

"Because," he says carefully. The threads surge and narrow; suddenly there are only twenty. Confidence rushes into his tired heart and then there are only five, and as he watches through the corner of his eye they begin to take on color. He focuses in on the gossamer glowing gold as he informs his parents of the only thing he's certain will make them care whether he, Phantom, the ghost they hate and distrust more than any other, lives or dies. "Because." He sighs. Hamlet must have been right when he said death makes cowards of us all, because he's sure the words he speaks next are those of a coward. Yet it's almost a relief as the last of the tangled lines vanishes, leaving only one. The golden thread shimmers brighter than his cage and for a split second he hears it ring. "Because I'm the only one who can save your son."

He may be a coward but he's made his choice. (To be.)

For the first time since this mess began, Danny sees a bit of his own fear reflected in his parents eyes. It's his father who finds his voice first following Danny's bold declaration and, for all the charming bumbling good-naturedness that makes it hard to fear him _even_ when he's got Danny in an electrified cage, Jack's voice is like gasoline when he speaks now. "What does our son have to do with this?"

 _Everything_. "He's... in danger." _Tread carefully, Danny. You're tiptoeing over landmines now._

Maddie's eyes narrow into slits and she backs away from the containment unit, fingers tightening around the hand drill like she plans to use it for more than just craftsmanship. "Don't listen to it, Jack. It's just another trick."

Danny coughs, keeping his hand over his mouth to hide the telltale red from their prying eyes. His own words haunt him again, laughing in the back of his mind. _Bet you're wondering about the red. Stay tuned to find out._ First he hoped it would get them interested; now he only hopes they'll look away. "Is that so?" he sputters. "Tell me, when was the last time you heard from him?"

"We spoke just this afternoon," Jack hastily asserts. "Whatever you're trying to pull, it won't—"

"I'm _not trying to_ —" Danny groans as a spasm shakes him. Losing his temper won't get him anywhere. He's already picked this path and if he veers off course now, that's it. Game over. Last life. "I'm not trying anything. Go ahead, call up your son. He won't answer."

"Jack..." Doubt has crept into her stoic facade and when she turns to her husband he already has his phone pressed to his ear. The unmistakeable tune of _Thriller_ plays from the speaker—the ringback tone Tucker set as a lame practical joke that Danny's been too lazy to change—and then it goes to voicemail. Without looking away from Danny, Jack hits redial, and the three of them awkwardly listen to the funky _yow!_ 's of Michael Jackson for another twenty three seconds until Danny's faint voice once again cuts in. _Hey, this is Danny's phone. If it's an emergency, keep calling till I pick up. If I'm still not picking up, call Sam or Tucker._

Jack turns back to his phone, presumably to do just as his son advised in his voicemail, but is stopped by Maddie's sudden grip on his arm.

"Jack. Sam and Tucker are at the hospital with Jazz. I saw them there and Danny wasn't with them."

"But he was supposed to be spending the night at Tucker's tonight. He wasn't with them?"

"I don't know." Her grip tightens. Maddie's anger is morphing into something a lot more formidable: a mother's fear. "I didn't think twice about it because I was so worried about Jazz but I didn't... Call him again."

"Won't do any good." They both wheel around to look at Danny, like they've forgotten he's even there.

"If you know something about where my son is, I'd advise you speak up," Jack barks, inadvertently pointing his pen at him.

 _You've got their attention, now go in for the kill._ "He's not somewhere you can reach him." Before they can protest he plunges on. "But I can."

Jack has crossed to the knobs Maddie was fiddling with earlier and locks eyes him with in determination. "If you don't tell me where my son is _right now_ I'll turn the voltage up so high it'll take you a week to rematerialize."

Freaking _yikes_. "It's not that simple," he stammers hastily. "Even if I told you, you'd never be able to find him yourself. I have to be the one. Has to be me."

Maddie's frown deepens. "Why?"

"I don't have _time_ to explain why." ( _God_ how he's starting to hate that word.) "Just trust me!"

But he doesn't have to look up to know they _don't_ and it's too much and he slams his fist on the glass of the cage, which sends a shock through his body strong enough to make his heart stutter over its next beat. Steady now. Steady.

"I know you don't trust ghosts but I'm asking you to trust _me_. Just this once. Me. The one who's saved a thousand people a thousand times over. The one who's protected the town for three whole years even though people like you try to kill me for it. Please," he begs. His hand slides down the glass, sending another jolt up his arm. There is no longer anything steady. "I'm going to die here on the floor if you don't let me out right this minute, and if that happens I can guarantee you'll never see your son again. I'm not threatening you, I'm _asking_ you. _Please_. I saved your daughter. Let me save your son."

He can't bring himself to look up and see if his pleas are being flung at brick walls. His fingers strain against the glass when Jack's legs come into view.

"How do we know you aren't lying? How do we know you won't just run if we let you go?"

"How many hours have you spent studying me? I even saw it in your notes. You've got my obsession pegged. _Heroism_." His grimace of pain splits into a grin bordering on manic. "You know I don't have any choice but to save him."

Maddie's legs draw up next to Jack's and her logic cuts sharply into the discussion. "You're in no condition to fight anything," she reasons. "If you lead us to him we can—" She stops when Danny shakes his head. He watches a bead of sweat work its way down his nose. It captures his attention; he can't seem to remember ever having _sweat_ in ghost form before.

"No," he says. Late, distracted. "There won't be any fight, so my condition doesn't matter," he assures her, finally remembering why he said no. "But I go alone."

Maddie's temper flares. "Your negotiation skills could use work."

When he wipes away the drop of sweat he learns his hand is shaking. _Steady_. "This isn't a negotiation. You're not understanding. You _have_ to trust what I'm saying." They have to. There's no other option now but death. He flinches when Maddie steps forward, but whatever she was going to say never comes. Instead he hears his father's voice, gentle and calming.

"Mads... Maybe we should listen to it."

"But—but..." For a moment she flounders with words and finally lands on, "Jack, it's a coin toss. What if it's making this all up?"

"What if it's _not?_ I'd rather lose a ghost than my son."

The air tenses, and Danny senses his last move has already been made. All that's left is to watch the opponent decide between saving a pawn or checking the king. _Me, or me._ Danny isn't certain precisely what the founding fathers had in mind when they wrote the words "cruel and unusual punishment," but without a doubt this would have qualified. Jack's words hang in the air in a stifling ellipses, for three moments too long, during which the only sounds are Danny's ragged breaths inside the glorified aviary. At long last, Maddie raises the hand drill and rests the back end on her shoulder with a defeated tip of her head.

"Good point."

Danny lurches to his feet in disbelief as his dad goes about undoing the extra security his mom's barely just set up, feeling something dangerously akin to hope creeping into his heart. "Understand," Jack commands, while the thin electric currents sizzle out and leave dark hairline cavities in the glass, "that if our son isn't returned to us, I will personally teach you the difference between existence and nonexistence, molecule by molecule."

 _If that happens then the lesson won't be necessary._ "Molecule by molecule." The absurd phrase has never sounded less funny. "Understood."

He realizes they're waiting for him to phase through the now-unprotected glass and he blanches away from it. Can he summon that kind of energy right now without passing out and reverting to human? Can he summon it at all? Maybe he should ask them to open the door... But then again, it couldn't be wise to show them how truly weakened he was.

 _You can do this, Fenton, you fight fifty-foot ghosts on the regular. What's a little intangibility?_

First his pinky. Okay, so far so good. The rest of his hand. Okay. Then his arm, and his vision goes grainy and the walls try to switch places with each other. When he finally gets ahold of himself it's on the floor outside the cage and there's crackling light splitting every molecule in his ribs apart—only no, it isn't. It's a familiar light, one that usually brings warmth. One that usually doesn't _hurt_. But this time where the otherworldly transformative light shines, where underneath the glow his physical body is taking the place of his corporeal one, he can feel not only warmth, but fire. _Fire_. Suddenly, there's nothing else.

Someone's screaming; maybe it's him, maybe it's his parents. Someone says fire. Fire on the mountain.

The cries turn into music, coming in faintly from a pair of old stereo headphones he found in the attic last month, cutting out in his left ear whenever the bass drops too low. Three days after the accident, Danny pulls his blanket up to his ears, trying to quell a bone-deep shiver. He'll never tell Dad but he secretly likes all those Grateful Dead live recordings Dad forces the family to listen to on long road trips. They're a little boring.. but relaxing, though. So that's what he puts on now as he attempts to calm the frigid whirlpool in his chest that's been sucking at his insides ever since he nearly died in the portal accident on Monday. Winterland '78. Good show.

In truth, judging by the vacuous sensation behind his eyes, he feels like dying is still a possible outcome here. That's the last time he ever does anything stupid to impress a girl...

Fifteen thousand two hundred ninety days before the accident, Jerry Garcia laughs into the mic and picks up the next song without stopping. Long distance runner, what ya standin' there for?

Two women right below the stage let out a tandem yell. It's their song.

Three days after the accident, Danny falls out of bed, unable to breathe. A cold hand has a hold of his heart and is squeezing it dry. It's not pain he feels when he looks down at his chest in startled awe to see a shocking glacial light he's never seen before, breaking his skin, washing him through with an alien fog. The music crackles in his left ear. Fire… Fire on the mountain.

One thousand one hundred twenty eight days after the accident, Danny gasps at the force it takes to subdue the transformation reflex. Everything else but his patch of floor is explosively indistinct, until he looks up through his tangled bangs. Directly into the barrel of an ectogun.

"Don't fire!" Jack is bellowing. "Don't fire, Mads, you'll destroy it! We need it!"

"But that _light_ , Jack, it's the same from the library—"

"If it was an attack, the lab's sensors would've—"

"I know!" Maddie's gun disappears from Danny's face and even in his sorry state he can tell she's not angry at Jack, or even Danny. She's confused. Lost, even. "I know." The gun is back, this time glowing green deep within the barrel, whining quietly as it charges. "Just get out of here, ghost, and bring us back our son."

He no longer trusts himself to speak. Danny can only nod, and struggle to his feet. Without the energy to fly he's left to hobble up the stairs, painstakingly slow, feeling the eye of the gun on his back the whole time. At the top he doesn't turn, afraid to agitate the situation any further, afraid of what he might see. But he knows he must remind them of one last thing, or else pay the price later.

"Don't follow me," he spits out through gritted teeth. "Or you won't like what you find."


	3. The Calendar Hung Itself

Two little references to two short fics of mine (which I gave a scarcely secret soft spot for) in this chapter. See if you can catch them.

* * *

 **. . .**

 **The Calendar Hung Itself**

 **. . .**

 _Well the clock's heart it hangs inside its open chest_

 _with hands stretched towards the calendar hanging itself._

 _But I will not weep for those dying days;_

 _for all the ones who've left there's a few that stayed,_

 _and they found me here and pulled me from the grass where I was laid._

(Bright Eyes, 2000)

 **. . .**

Danny makes it past six houses before the reflex hits him again. This time around when the transformative energy erupts from his chest, he makes no effort to fight. He succumbs. The world swims, inverted and impossible in color. But Danny turns his back on it all. Behind a two-story house with darkened windows he knocks over a recycling bin trying to find something solid to support his weight and goes down with it. Lying half buried in cardboard and old junk mail, Danny watches an emergency helicopter pass high above in the sliver of sky visible between buildings. It's en route to Amity Northwest. For some reason, this makes him laugh.

This is it, then. He has no energy left to get up. Certainly none to walk, or fly.

Hopefully his parents won't be too heartbroken when they find him like this in the morning, cold and lifeless in a dirty alley. What a lame way to go... Always secretly thought he'd go down in battle. It isn't his parents fault, though he knows they'll blame themselves anyway. Jazz will explain; why it had to be this way. Sam and Tucker will help to soften the blow… Oh no. Sam and Tucker. What will they do? He can't… Wait. He can't do this to them. They'll hate him. They'll never forgive him. _That's right, they'll never forgive you. So get up. Wake up, Danny. Wake up!_

"Are you tired?"

Danny opens his eyes and realizes the sea of stars he's been watching have lived only behind his eyes. In the slice of real sky he can focus on three, maybe four. Wearily he registers a luminescent figure looming above him. Alarm bells sound internally but all he can do is fidget. "What..?"

The figure stretches one hand toward him. Beckoning. "Are you tired?"

Sleep encroaches on his eyelids again, blurring the figure into obscurity. "Yeah. Tired."

"Are you going to sleep, then?"

Yeah. Sleep. That sounds good.

 _"Danny!"_

The word jars him awake so fast he flies upright. Everything's wrong. The sun blinds him from the east, striping the alleyway with dusty morning rays. Morning. It's morning?

That voice. "Danny. Danny, no. No no no no _no_."

When he sees Sam his breath catches. He should be feeling waves of relief but it's wrong. Fear and anguish contort her face as she breaks her stance and runs toward him. He springs to his feet with a shocking amount of agility, ready to embrace her, ready to tell her it's fine, he's fine, everything's fine. But she runs past him and falls to her knees.

It's then that he sees It. Sprawled unnaturally in the newspapers and cartons and ripped up cardboard, eyes staring upward and unseeing at the rooftops. Sam is sobbing, pressing newspaper on his body's wound, but a hideous jolt jars Danny's entire being. The blood there is already dry. When Sam starts pushing rhythmically on his body's heart, Tucker walks through Danny where he stands and throws his hat on the ground.

"Get up," Tucker pleads.

Sam goes on trying to resuscitate his unresponsive body. In a fit of rage, Tucker hurls his cell phone at the opposite wall, where it shatters into bits of plastic and glass. Danny can't watch. He turns away. Tucker bellows, "Come on, Danny, get up!" On the ground, in seven separate pieces, Tucker's phone begins to ring. "Get up!" Unnerved, Danny moves toward the phone. The blue buzzing screen is three feet from the battery and it says _Tucker calling_. "Get up!" Danny grabs the screen—

—and lurches to his feet, pulled upward by a sturdy hand. The alley is black, the night is silent, and Clockwork is staring at him expectantly. "I believe someone is calling you."

All Danny can think is a huge _question mark._ Clockwork raises an eyebrow, an act which stretches the scar that runs upward from his cheek to his forehead, splicing his face in two. His eyes are shrouded as ever beneath crimson pearl cataracts. On cue, Danny's left pocket starts to vibrate. He digs out his phone with stupid fingers and it goes to voicemail before he can find the green button. The screen hurts his eyes. _11 new messages. 27 missed calls._

It starts to buzz again and Danny answers on the first ring, leaning on the brick wall as he says, "Hi Tuck."

"Danny! Finally— _Sam, he answered_ —Danny, what the heck happened? Are you okay?"

"Mm okay," he lies.

"Really?" Tucker sounds skeptical.

"Can you come'ere?" Maybe he sounds like he's five years old but he can't think of better words.

Crackling noises, fumbling, and then Sam's voice comes through with crystal clarity. "Where are you?"

He looks around. "Alley?"

"Danny, focus. Where. Are. You."

With the faintest hint of impatience, Clockwork takes the phone from him and presses it to his own ear. The sight is disarmingly mundane. Like seeing the president at a shoe store. "He's on Rosemary Street."

Danny hears Sam's response clearly. "What? What are you doing so close to home? What the hell happened?"

"Danny is in bad shape. Come get him. Now."

Tucker cuts in again. "Okay, you are seriously scaring me. Don't move, we're on our way."

Danny takes his phone back somewhat indignantly after Clockwork hangs up on Tucker. "Shouldn't have scared him," Danny mutters. Clockwork follows as Danny stumbles out of the alley, holding a wad of yesterday's paper to his side.

"You should stay put. It will be easier for them to find you."

"You," Danny sputters, rounding on Clockwork with a pointed finger like a drunkard, "don't get to—give me advice—anymore." Pause for breath. Another two steps. "Look where that—got me. No offense. But—get lost."

Clockwork floats in front of him as Danny moves painstakingly step by step down the sidewalk, infuriating him with the effortless way he keeps pace. "I'm afraid I don't understand the accusation. We went over the importance of choice earlier, and it was your own choices which led you here."

As if Clockwork is nothing more than a particularly motivated fly, Danny waves him away. Of course, his arm passes right through and Danny stumbles. "You— _did_ something to me. Made me see..." Faced with describing the threads of reality that thrum like piano wire, Danny runs out of words. He stretches his hand out, remembering how the last one rang as he chose it, and presently a thread flashes in the dark. Danny plucks it. It flashes again, brighter; it stretches from the alleyway behind him, through his heart, and onward down Rosemary toward a tangle of threads at the street corner whereat 22nd makes a perpendicular crossing. If it were 7:00am on a school day before the accident he'd be running to catch the bus there.

Clockwork comes to rest on the ground beside Danny. Oddly, he hasn't seen Clockwork's age fluctuate since he helped him up out of the recycling. He's still in that creepy same-height zone that weirds Danny out that he shifted into way back at the library. In this state the ghost reeks of youth and health, all strong shoulders and hundred-yard stare. Nothing at all like the innocent child he sometimes seems, or the peaked man just beginning to hang his shoulders, or wizened face whose only resemblance to the child is that ugly scar.

"So, you can see it?" Clockwork muses. The string sparkles down the sidewalk toward the tangle, drifting, yet anchored, like seaweed underwater. "That's… interesting. Tell me, when did you begin to see them?"

"Don't play dumb. Thought you showed me them on purpose. Part of my lesson. Or whatever."

With a shake of his head Clockwork resumes the trek down the sidewalk, leaving Danny to follow. "I'm not here to teach you a lesson, Danny. Not this time."

Can't be true. Whenever Clockwork falls into a stasis like this with his physical body it means he's about to put a lot of effort into something (i.e. a lecture). "So what's with the... the _threads_ , then?" If Clockwork didn't reveal them then why can he see them?

"I have an explanation, if you want it."

"Shoot." He's halfway to the tangle at the street corner now. It's close. He convinces himself all he has to do is make it there, to that spot, and then he can rest.

"Your powers, as you call them, are you aware of what they are?" When Danny doesn't deign to answer he continues. "Ghosts and their abilities; all are a manipulation of matter through energy. Yours are no different."

"So?" Danny is passing under one of the few streetlamps on this street and feels horribly exposed. He quickens his pace as best he can.

"So, when you create energy all you are doing is manipulating space. You can shift your own atoms to pass between others, you can heat the molecules in air so much they become an unstable plasma, you can cool molecules to nearly zero on the Kelvin scale... Consider this. You have only _one_ power: the power to subvert the laws of physics which everything else on this spatial plane is subject to. To exert control over forces. Over matter. Over energy."

"You're just telling me stuff I know," Danny seethes, "in a smartass way." A car turns the corner and it isn't Sam's. Danny slinks into the shadows until it passes.

"Have you ever noticed," Clockwork continues, unwavering, "that you develop abilities, situationally, as you come upon circumstances where you require them to survive?"

 _"So?"_ Almost to the street corner. At least Clockwork's jabbering is keeping him awake.

" _So_ , did you think of it as a recurring convenient coincidence?" Clockwork snaps, losing his patience. Danny shrugs, though he stops immediately due to the extra pain it causes. "It's not. And Danny?"

He says it with pause, with an uncharacteristic hesitance, and because of this Danny nearly stops. But the tangle at the street corner is so close. He keeps on. If he can make it that far he knows he can make it to the next one. He can do anything if he takes it bit by bit. "What?" Danny calls over his shoulder.

"By now you must know... must have realized."

Another car turns the corner two streets down and Danny has no urge to hide. He knows the shape of those headlights. "Realized what, exactly?"

Clockwork sighs and Danny reluctantly gives him a second glance, only to find he's finally shifting. His face thins and he shrinks toward the sidewalk, exchanging all his muscle mass for energy, brightening and brightening as the years fall away. With no pupils to follow it's always been impossible to tell where the ghost is looking but Danny knows he's being stared down by the fast shrinking child as he speaks. "That time is a plane as subject to subversion as space."

Danny freezes, barely registering that he's arrived at the street corner. The knot of light there pulses with life and mystery, whispering things he doesn't understand. "I don't want to subvert anything." Danny lowers himself gingerly to the curb and Sam's Tesla crawls down the street. They'll see him soon enough. He can wait a moment more.

"No," Clockwork replies sadly, "you don't. But you gave up that path one thousand one hundred twenty eight days ago, on the day you subverted death."

On the quiet road tires screech. The Tesla speeds the rest of the way down the street before stopping on a dime in front of Danny, and his two closest friends launch themselves out of the car like they mean to arrest him. He can't filter any words out of the mess of talk they're throwing at him as they heave him to his feet. They might as well be speaking Martian.

Danny looks back at Clockwork from the backseat of Sam's car. Still shrinking, still staring. "You coming with?" Danny asks.

Tucker slides in after him and slams the door. "Who are you talking to, Danny? Go, Sam, what are you doing? Go!"

Danny points at the ghost, still hovering where Danny left him between the tangle of unearthly light and that of the physical streetlamp. "Clockwork." No one is listening.

"Go where?" Sam demands.

The two of them meet eyes in the rearview mirror and Tucker blurts, with a grimace, "Hospital."

The engine revs. "You're right."

"No!" Danny squirms, trying to sit upright, failing. Tucker is holding his shoulder to the pleather seat and that's all it takes to keep him down. "No hospital."

Tucker swears under his breath. "Man, you know I hate hospitals too but this is not the time to—"

"No," he grinds out. "Can't. Don't."

"We don't have any other options," Sam reasons. Her knuckles turn white as she squeezes the steering wheel and pulls a u-turn, but screeches to an uncertain halt again. "I know going there risks blowing your cover, but it isn't worth dying over. We've talked about this, remember? I won't let you die for this secret."

"Won't die," Danny mumbles. "Death doesn't... like me." He chuckles deep in his chest. "It's cause I called him a smartass."

He jolts as Tucker slaps his face. "No sleeping," Tucker warns, verging on hysterical.

"No hospital," Danny reaffirms, slightly more aware now. He doesn't know much but he knows he can't go to a hospital. He doesn't have to see any threads to know that every path that way leads over the side of a cliff. Police investigation into his injury, subsequent separation from parents. Or his parents are notified by staff of his whereabouts and they come, only to see his injury is identical to Phantom's in every way _. Yikes. Cut off that thought process_. Even if that escapes their notice, they'll want to skewer Phantom for allowing it to happen after promising their son's safe return. Or worse, accuse him of inflicting it. Or even worse, before his parents ever get there, anomalies come up in his vitals and he gets flagged and staff notifies the GIW as per the law… This train of thought is making him violently nauseous. "Anywhere else," he groans. "Anywhere."

Tucker sighs, "There's nowhere else, Danny."

And he's right. This kind of injury is beyond their meager knowledge base. The first day Sam gave him stitches freshman year she cursed every time her hands slipped in the ectoplasm. They skirted around the word 'blood,' knowing it wasn't, not really. It was different now. He was different. She'd stayed up all night to keep him awake, convinced he was concussed, and he knew even back then that one day staying awake wouldn't be enough. In the rearview mirror her worry lines are all he can see. Outside is a blur of red yellow green and black black black. But they still aren't moving. They're waiting on his word; even now they trust him enough to let him steer the way. But where can he possibly turn for help? Who else is there? Vlad? Danny laughs out loud, earning another anxious glance from Tucker. The only people who can help him now are enemies. Although…

What a terrible idea. _Don't do it. Do not do that, Fenton. If you do that you are off the rails for good._ But he opens his mouth to speak anyway. To hell with it.

"Valerie," he says. "Take me to Valerie."

The car explodes with Tucker and Sam's competing shouts but Danny doesn't hear what they say. He lets his head fall back against the headrest, feeling light and free, weightless now that he's finally passed his life into someone else's hands, one word still trailing from his tongue, half spoken, half dreamed; _Valerie_. With a rueful smile he zones out, focusing through the yellow blur outside to Clockwork, where he floats beneath the streetlamp, still shrinking. A toddler now and ever smaller, ever more luminescent. He's never seen Clockwork as a baby before. The car is moving, the street corner receding, and Danny cranes his head around to see. He wants to see. But they turn down an unlit backstreet and all Danny can see is his reflection on the rear windshield.

They fly through a red light at an empty intersection. The windshield bleeds into the road, the traffic light bleeds into the car, door opens and Danny bleeds out onto asphalt. Not her front door. What time is it? Arms are tugging him toward a concrete arch but Danny pulls away, stumbling toward the yawning alley mouth. Not her front door. Stairs hit his feet and knees and hands until the arms come under his biceps again and haul him up the fire escape. Tucker wants to know if Danny will know which window is hers. He does. Though he can't speak he knows, and when they get to the third floor and he sees the potted cactus in her window he collapses on the railing.

Three sharp knocks later Valerie cracks her blinds.

Three people carry him inside.

Every time he wakes up something is different. Valerie is sticking something in his arm. But the next time she isn't there and Sam is sleeping. Tucker is holding a bag of blood. He wakes in the night to someone giving him CPR; he doesn't know who. His breath comes ragged and his entire body shudders when he draws each breath, like it's his first time touching oxygen. They try to speak to him again but he acknowledges only the basest commands. Follow this light with your eyes. Nod if you can hear me.

Every time he wakes up he's nodding... nodding. The summer when Danny almost died at the beach, it was because a retreating wave caught him by the chest and he'd never heard of a riptide before. Didn't know you were supposed to swim sideways.

He learned, though, the hard way. He always does.

Daylight streams in striped bands through the dusty room and Valerie is screaming at Sam. Tucker is spilling water down Danny's neck as he tries to get him to swallow some. The phone in Danny's pocket is ringing and Sam fishes it out to turn it off. He tries to nod, but she's not looking. The room is pink and, briefly, Danny is alone.

The cracks in the blinds are magenta in the mirror on Valerie's closet door and Danny has to wonder if it's sunrise or sunset. He's not even sure what year it is.

He's lying prone on the floor under a thick blue comforter, head propped up on a throw pillow. Valerie's bedroom looks shockingly similar to the last time he set foot in it two years ago. Same loud art on the walls, same bottles on the dresser. Like she hasn't changed a bit. Is that good or bad? Slowly, gently, Danny lifts a stiff arm toward his chest to survey the damage, and is surprised to find several bandages wrapping his right forearm. He doesn't remember getting cut there. Gingerly poking his way along his ribs he finds thick gauze encasing his whole stomach. Underneath the bandage it's sore. Tender. But when he nudges it he doesn't pass out. That has to be good, it means it's getting better already. It's healing.

Convinced enough to justify more movement, Danny works himself up into a sitting position, letting the blanket pool in his lap. The bandages are tight, not allowing for any twisting. That's fine by him. He lays a hand over the telltale pink spot on the white medical tape. The pain is there but it's dull, and the possibility dawns on him that he's on some kind of painkiller. That would explain the way everything seems like it's turned down to its lowest setting, including his brain.

"Good morning."

Whiplash. He hisses in pain as he wrenches toward Valerie's voice involuntarily and then keels backward onto the pillow, clutching his side.

"Take your time," she says coolly, entering the room and clicking the door shut behind her. A glass clinks on a wooden surface and she steps around him to climb on her bed, crossing both her legs and arms. "I've waited three days, so I can wait a minute more."

"Valerie." His voice is chalky from disuse and he tries to clear his throat but she interrupts.

"I think I already know what you're going to say, so allow me go first." Her hair is longer than he remembers. She brushes it aside, recalling his attention. "You come to my house at four in the morning, near death. Your friends refuse to bring you to a hospital. Refuse to tell me why. Refuse to tell me why they think I of all people can help you. Miraculously, you don't die in my bedroom. By that first morning you're a listed missing person. People are looking for you. Meanwhile you're in my bedroom getting _blood transfusions_ from _Tucker_ —" she's escalated into hysteria and she pauses to rake her hands backward through her mane of hair before going on more collectedly "—and we're all skipping school to keep you alive. Your friends refuse to tell anyone where you are, refuse to get you proper medical attention, and _still_ refuse to tell me why."

"Val, there's a good—"

"I'm not _done_ yet, Danny. God knows I'm glad you're okay. I mean, I opened the window, didn't I?"

Danny looks away. "You did."

Bed springs creak and Danny's blanket pulls taut as she slides off the bed to sit by him, drawing her knees up to her chest. "Tucker and Sam are in the kitchen eating breakfast. They haven't left me alone with you since you got here. It took me five whole minutes just now to convince them to let me bring you some water. Here, by the way." Valerie reaches behind him toward the nightstand and offers him the glass. He sits up to accept it, eyeing her warily. She doesn't look offended by his caution, but suspicious. "I thought they were being crazy. But then you started... You're healing, at an _impossible_ rate. And since you're awake I think it's time someone tell me exactly what is going on—and Danny, it better be a damn good explanation."


	4. Hospital Bed Crawl

Gets a bit abstract from this point guys, so fasten your seatbelts. Everything is up for interpretation...

* * *

. . .

 **Hospital Bed Crawl**

. . .

 _I feel:_

 _well, hey,_

 _you're the only thing I wouldn't change_

 _in this place. It's strange to say_

 _you're the only angel I ever gave away._

(The Hush Sound, 2008)

. . .

Infinitesimal waves ripple outward from the center of the glass cradled in his hands. She's right. She at least deserves something, and on some level he knew when he decided to come here, even through the fog of pain, that he'd be having this conversation. But how to begin? _Where_ to begin?

"Thank you," Danny offers, unable to look up from his water. "I'd have bit the dust for sure if not for you." That much he's certain of.

"Yeah, alright," Valerie shoots back, "we can start with that part. Why did you come here, of all places? We've barely spoken since, well, you know." Bed springs creak behind her as she fidgets on the floor. "How did you know I would be able to..."

"You told me once your mom was a surgeon," Danny shrugs. It's true. "Like mother like daughter?"

"Nuh-uh. Weak. Think I'm buying that, Fenton? Try again."

 _"Valerie."_

They lock eyes accidentally and she snaps her mouth shut, furrowing her eyebrows at his intensity. In an effort to ease the tension he smiles, but it comes out forced and awkward so he shies away, redirecting the tension at the vibrant bottles falling all over her dresser. Hairspray, perfume, a corked glass syrup dispenser filled instead with seashells. Three cans of compressed air, stainless steel polish, a jar filled with something the color of gasoline that's begun to leak out onto a copy of _An Introductory to Advanced Mechanics._ When he spies the book his grin morphs into something genuine. Valerie really is something else, and despite every layer of hell she's dragged him through in the past the primary emotion he feels for her is still respect. He respects her. Sue him.

 _She really does deserve answers. You know what that means, Fenton. Buckle up._

"What?" On the defensive now, Valerie frowns when she follows his line of sight.

"Val... There's no easy way to say this, so I'll just come out with it. I know."

"Know what?"

He softens a bit, sipping on his water. It burns as it goes down and freezes his stomach like dry ice. "You know what.

With a flourish she stands up and tears the how-to book from the puddle of black fluid to hide it from Danny's prying gaze, scattering drops all across the room. "Whatever you think you know, you don't."

"Yeah," he sighs, "I do. That's why I knew you'd be the one person who could help me. Since you're out getting yourself injured all the time I figured you'd had to have learned a thing or two about how to, uh, patch things up."

"What—but I—No. No way, this is insane. You can't know. I've been so careful!"

"It's okay, don't sweat. No one else knows about your hobby except for Sam and Tucker, and they're not telling anyone."

"I don't understand. How could you know? Why have you..." She clams up and makes a frustrated snarling sound before taking a breath to calm herself. "I have even more questions now than I did before, so start talking!"

Dismayed, Danny sets his glass down, which has suddenly become terribly heavy. "You're mad?" Shock, he can deal with. Confusion, fine. But anger—that's bad. This will not go well if she's already irate climbing over this first little speed bump.

"I'm not only mad, Danny, I feel... _violated_."

Ouch. "Hey, it's not like I've spied on you or anything! We found out by accident. And I'm serious when I say we won't tell anyone. I mean we haven't yet and we've already known about it for—" he cuts himself off. Is that too much? Damn, he shouldn't have—

"How long?" Too late. Suspicion stains the space between them. This is starting to feel more like banter between Phantom and Red than a catch-up between two old friends. "Danny, how long!"

He screws his eyes shut. Too late. "Freshman year."

"Hold up—you've known for almost _three years?_ "

"Danny?"

The door has opened without them realizing, and Danny's other two saviors are pushing past Valerie to get to him. Strained relief plays across Tucker's face as he almost trips on the glass of water to clap Danny on the shoulder. "Hey, stupid. Come to join us in the world of the living?"

Sam smacks Tucker upside the head before rounding on Valerie. "Why didn't you come tell us he was coherent?" Sam accuses.

Hands on her hips, Valerie faces Sam down glare for glare. "I thought maybe he would shed some light on what the hell is going on, since you two pled the fifth for three straight days."

Sam looks afraid to ask. "Danny, what did you tell her?"

"Oh, only that you three apparently know all my deepest darkest secrets!"

Tucker grimaces. "Sure didn't waste any time, huh Danny?" He relaxes into a cross-legged position as near Danny as possible. Danny tries to protest the mother-bear-like gesture but Tucker doesn't give him time. Shooting Valerie a halfhearted finger gun Tucker asks, "Would it help if we all agreed you were a badass sharpshooter?"

"No, it wouldn't. We've only scratched the surface, haven't we?" Valerie waves her book at Danny, splashing him with a couple more black droplets. The smell of copper fills his nose.

"Valerie," Tucker warns, snaking an arm protectively across Danny's shoulders. "Danny just skirted death. Can we give him a breather before launching the Spanish Inquisition?"

"Don't bullshit me," Valerie counters, pushing past Sam. "I've been just as worried as you have about him but I'm not a moron. My eyes are as good as yours and I'm the one who's been changing the gauze out. I know as well as you that he's gonna be fine. The question is _how_."

"That's Danny's business." Sam tries to cut between them again but Valerie isn't having it.

"You three made it my business."

While the girls vainly attempt to keep from getting physical, Danny side-eyes Tucker. "Maybe she deserves to know everything. She did save me."

"So what?" Sam snarls. She shoves Valerie off, who falls into the dresser and knocks the syrup bottle onto the carpet where it smashes itself into a pile of shell fragments and seaglass and sand. "You don't owe her anything, Danny. Maybe she saved you, but so what. _She_ owed _you_."

Shifting uneasily to the other foot, Sam folds her arms over her chest, breathing heavily. Loud bravado or not, Danny can always tell when she's scared.

Barely audible, Sam hisses _, "After everything she's done to you."_

"There it is again." Valerie kicks the remains of the bottle, scattering grainy beach sand. "The distrust, the allusion to something you three know that I don't. Shove me again," she says through gritted teeth, pointing a finger at Sam in a way that implies she wishes she could redirect lightning through it, "and I'll break your arm."

"Guys," Danny interjects, "please—"

"Try it," Sam snarls. "I'm not as fragile as I look."

 _"Guys."_ This time it's Tucker who speaks, rising swiftly to ease his way between the two girls. Everyone looks at him. For a moment a ponderous look crosses over Tucker's face and it seems like he's going to say something profound. But he bites his lip and it passes. "This is really shitty," he groans, and looks to Danny.

"I have to tell her," Danny mumbles in reply, resting his elbows on his knees. His head hangs. He's so tired.

There's not really another way out of this argument. If he doesn't tell her now then that distrust she's picked up on becomes real, forever. It's been years since he gave up on whatever romance they might have had, but he's never given up on the hope they could one day be friends. Friends without secrets. There's no telling what she'll do if he leaves her to fester on what's transpired without completing the blanks he's created in her head. No telling what crazy madlib she'll fill in on her own. No, he has to strike quick, now, before this gets any worse. Rip off the bandaid.

"You know, you don't have to say anything, Danny." Sam's voice is soothing and, to his surprise, right next to his ear.

He snaps his head up from his hand. Everyone is in a different spot. Tucker is lounging on Valerie's bed, tossing a hackey sack up and catching it. Valerie is sitting with her back against the sliding mirror door of her closet staring him down. Sam is crouching near him, concern turning her eyes into telescopes that search his face for signs of life. How long has he been out of it?

Sam continues, "You have a choice. There's always a choice."

He laughs: a raspy sharp exhale that makes him sound like he's crazy. "That's the _problem_." She frowns. Of course she doesn't understand what he means. "Just give me a second," he says, feigning exhaustion by cradling his head again. He needs to think. What was it Clockwork said to him under the streetlamp? Something, something, developing abilities as he needs them. He called this gossamer-of-time thing an ability—or rather, yet another function of his one and only ability.

"Subversion," Danny mutters.

Distantly he can hear Sam replying but the words don't make it past his ear drums. He presses a hand to his side, where underneath the miles of medical tape his cells are regenerating at rates hitherto only seen in doctors' wet dreams.

He's never thought too much on the way his body does this. Or, tries not to. Don't look too close at a good thing, right? It's never crossed his mind that it might not be a simple biological side effect of the accident; that he might be doing it, however subconsciously, on purpose.

Focusing, he mentally dims everything else in the room. With his senses closed off he listens to the way his heart hammers steady in his chest and follows the erratic sting in his ribs as the tears in his chest slowly mend. Fluid moves and bones creak as atoms become molecules and coalesce into sinew, growing from the ether to stretch across a microscopic chasm, reattaching one side to the other with increasing speed as all Danny's attention spotlights on it, honing in until—he snaps awake. The sting is gone from his side. Only a tender burning sensation is left, no more painful than a deep bruise. Well, that and a dull but persistent pang in his stomach.

When he realizes that it's only hunger he could laugh for days. This is real, then.

"Valerie," he calls out. His words seem far too loud in the bright, still room. Tucker perks up from the bed. Valerie surveys him warily but he feels very powerful despite the lingering weakness in his muscles, like there's nothing he can't do. "I'm ready. Ask me what you want to know."

"Danny, hang on!"

Danny grabs Sam's wrist to keep her from springing wildly to her feet . "It's fine, Sam. I'm ready."

Valerie takes no notice of either Sam or Tucker, who've taken on the look of seasick passengers, but rises from her seat against the mirror. She spares no time. "How did you get injured?"

Danny drums his fingers on his thigh and bites back a jokey quip. He honestly wasn't expecting that one first. "It was a ghost," he says. His tongue is numb. "He attacked us in my backyard. I got in the way when he went after Jazz. He freaked out and exploded all our patio furniture in a fit of rage, and I got skewered with a scrap of metal I didn't see coming. That and…" He thinks of the bookshelf careening towards him, the library floor smacking the life from his chest. "I fell."

Valerie purses her lips. The mention of ghosts has her hands clenched so tight it's a wonder her nails haven't shredded through to the other side. "What happened to the ghost?"

Danny waves his hand. "Captured by my parents." He doesn't want to get stuck on that rut.

"So why didn't you go to the hospital immediately?" She shoves her hands in the pocket of her hoodie and sizes him up, changing her mind. "Scratch that, I already figured that one out. It's because of this, right?" She gestures in his general direction without bothering to remove her hands from the pocket, daring him to deny it, which of course he doesn't. "The fact that you're hiding this, whatever 'this' is, speaks volumes," she says dryly. "There's something there you're afraid to let people see. That you're afraid to let _me_ see." These last words are quiet and she sounds genuinely hurt.

But then her shoulders tense and her jaw muscles clench. With a start Danny realizes there's something else in her hoodie pocket besides her hands. What is she holding?

"And I can't help but wonder what reason I could have possibly given you to be afraid of me," she says nonchalantly, steadfastly averting his eyes. "But I guess _you_ already answered that one."

With dreadful slowness she pulls her left hand from her pocket, dragging a polished weapon with it, fuschia lights blinking in tandem on the sides as if gleefully chanting: _fully charged._

Danny sees her game and quells the voice shrieking _fight or flight_ , but it's far too late—the instant reactions from Tucker and Sam are damning. Teeth bared like a mountain lion, Sam throws herself in front of him. Tucker falls off the bed in shock, yelling at Valerie to wait, to stop, to listen. Meanwhile the ectogun is still hanging from her thumb, idle and harmless, pointing at the carpet. Valerie is patient. She's just drawn a royal flush.

"God dammit, you two, chill out!" Danny seethes. He appreciates the sentiment but he has this under control!

This is not an unsalvageable situation. Not yet, anyway, or he'd be seeing those gossamer threads. Right? The second the thought crosses his mind he sees the telltale flash of light. A little flicker at the tip of Valerie's gun that looks nothing like ectoplasm. Excitement floods him. Did he do that? Did he make it appear? He thinks of the bone tissue regrowing in his abdomen and wonders just how far Clockwork's words will go.

"So." Valerie's forefinger twitches on the trigger. "What is it then? Are you being overshadowed? I mean, are you..." Sliding into a slightly more assertive stance, she tilts her head. "Are you overshadowing Danny's body?"

He's distracted, stretching his fingers, trying to unearth the threads from between the molecules in the air. "No," Danny says slowly, "and no." Maybe if he can find the one that connects to Valerie's gun he can follow it back to right before Sam and Tucker accidentally showed his hand, and take a different route instead. Could it work that way? The threads are there, somewhere beneath the surface, flitting in and out of reality like impossible quantum particles, trading this world for the next with all the ease of a child playing hopscotch. He can see them when he focuses but for the life of him he can't touch them. Why was it so easy before?

"I'll be honest," Valerie admits, "that was my only guess. And I thought that was a worst-case kind of thing, so now I'm _really_ nervous."

"Don't be nervous," Danny mumbles, only kind of paying attention to her. He finds the one that leads all the way from Valerie's weapon to his chest but already he's lost it among the infinite others. _Dang_ —he needs it for the dangerous idea he's forming. _They're passing between atoms. I can do that too._ But he needs to get a lock on that thread first. "There's nothing different," he stalls, "I've been like this as long as I've known you. I'm still me, Valerie."

"I got that, Danny, I got it. You're you. But who the hell _are_ you?"

"Valerie, I'm…"

What if this idea doesn't work? Should he exhaust all his options before trying something this desperate? But he can't help the flame of confidence lighting up underneath him; the possibility that he can shake the iron hand of time is too much and it's smothering his common sense. He wants that thread and suddenly he knows exactly how to get it. There's a surefire way to light it up brighter than the rest.

The powder blue comforter slides off his lap onto the floor as he gets to his feet, ignoring Valerie, who takes a half-step back. The thread flashes beneath the ectogun and there's a brighter flash near Danny's arm. Yeah, this is it. If he provokes her just a bit more she'll shoot. His lopsided grin makes a reappearance and he doesn't realize how manic he must look until Valerie's lip curls back and she raises her weapon. Danny watches it like prey in slow motion. There it is, lighting up as surely as if he'd just plugged it in, flashing forward across the room and drowning the millions of others with its newfound brilliance. Now he just has to reach for it and he's golden.

But when she flicks back the safety and automated lights whir along the side of the gun with a flurry of harsh beeps, Sam and Tucker lurch forward as one unit.

"No, wait!" he cries out— _he was so close_ —but it's too late and Sam has tackled Valerie into the closet mirror. The ectogun fires into the air and something shatters into a million refracting pieces. Danny's holding Tucker back and desperately trying to find the lost thread; they've spun into a whirlwind frenzy now and he can barely see anything. He's running blind and he too smacks into the mirror, slicing his right forearm wide open on a shard bigger than his head.

Somewhere Sam is groaning and then he's on his back. Valerie is panting, one knee digging painfully into his sternum, gun pointed directly at his forehead. "Step back, Foley, or I'll shoot him, got it?"

A shuffling of feet off to his right. Tucker gulps. "Valerie, be cool..."

"You're not exactly winning me over," Valerie growls at Danny, her thick rivulets of hair tickling his face as she shakes. "You've got _ten seconds_ before I assume the worst and take you down."

"Time is weird," Danny tells her, "you think you know how it works and then—"

"Five seconds!" she barks, pushing the tip of the gun right up to the bridge of his nose. He goes cross eyed for a moment trying to look at it. "And put your hands where I can see them!"

Nodding, he lays them flat on the carpet by his head. Dammit, he'd been just about to grab the right thread. Now it's gone dim again. He needs that freaking thread! He needs it so badly that when Valerie screams "What the hell are you?" he responds in kind with something he's dead certain will make her fire.

Maybe it's too far but he says it. "A phantom." And as he gives her that lone mischievous wink he's always saved for the Red Huntress her eyes widen in shocked recognition.

She reels, falling backwards off him, tripping over Sam's prone body. "You? _You?_ But you're..." She levels her gun at him and her features harden into an emotionless mask. He can't tell if the next word is supposed to be a protest or a prediction. "Dead."

Danny goes intangible just as she squeezes the trigger and the round blasts through what's left of her mirror, vaporizing whatever clothes are in her closet in a neon bonfire. "Close," he says, "but I'm only half, " and grabs the sunflare thread left in the wake of the projectile.

Whiplash again.

And again.

And again. He feels like he's in the loop of a rollercoaster without a seatbelt and then he's staring down the barrel of Valerie's gun, her velvet curls dusting his cheeks. She speaks and her words take years to reach him. "You've got ten seconds before I assume the worst and take you down."

"Time is weird," he tells her, "you think you know how it works and then—" he's flung away again, sent tripping over a backpack into a rusty blue locker.

"Sorry," Valerie says, hastily shoving her ectogun into her bag and hefting it over one shoulder before offering a hand to help him up. "Didn't see you there." Danny tries not to roll his eyes. She thinks she's so stealthy, it's a wonder no one else has figured her secret out yet. "Hey, you wanna go off-campus for lunch later?"

He tries to say yes but his ghost sense goes off. "Crap, gotta go, maybe later this week we can meet up to—"

"Fight me, will you!" Valerie rages over the torrential rain, voice muffled behind her mask. "Stop running and fight me!"

Danny ducks a projectile and does his best to not look like a wet dog. "Still mad I won't serve myself up on a silver platter?"

A well aimed blast knocks her off course and she drops her favorite weapon with an unintelligible curse. But she whips a small unimposing ectogun from her waistband with a satisfied grin and continues firing without missing a beat. "Yep," she cries, "still—"

"—mad, Danny, I feel _violated_."

Ouch. "Hey, it's not like I've ever spied on you or—"

"—ruined my life! I don't want to hear your excuses," she yells, drowned by the rain in more ways than one.

Danny slips into invisibility to throw her off and veers around the frontside of a billboard. A petal pink ad for dish soap features a family of doves splashing in a birdbath at dawn. He mumbles to himself, "Well they're all I've got." He runs one hand raggedly through his dripping hair, a nervous tic, and looks at his other hand in shock. A glowing string dangles from his fingertips. Surprised, he drops it. But it doesn't fall off and he's flying through the billboard into—

"Good morning," Valerie says. Whiplash. He has to get off this rollercoaster. He tries to let go of the thread but he's spinning out of control.

"Sure didn't waste any time, huh Danny?" Tucker relaxes into a cross-legged position as near Danny as possible. Shooting Valerie a halfhearted finger gun Tucker asks, "Would it help if we all agreed you were a badass sharpshooter?"

"No, it wouldn't. We've only just scratched the surface haven't we?"

"You're right," Danny blurts. It's different, he said something different this time and everything screeches to a halt, razor sharp and all-too-real. But the thread is still burning a hole in his hand and the tension is building in his chest. "Just the surface. Maybe if I..."

"You okay, man?" Tucker's hand is on his shoulder and Danny realizes there are just as many threads stretched between him and Tucker as there are between him and Valerie—if not more. So many more. Tucker chuckles uneasily in a memory, _Didn't anyone ever tell you you're supposed to swim sideways?_ Maybe he can't let go of this thread but what if he grabs one of these? He turns his hand intangible, slipping between atoms after one of Tucker's threads. His fingers blur and his body twists and—

"Who are you talking to, Danny? Go, Sam, what are you doing? Go!"

"I'm trying!" Sam is crying, and it frightens Danny to his core. He can count on one hand the number of times he's seen her cry. "I'm trying, Tucker, but I think he's lost too much blood. I don't know if..."

"He probably needs a transfusion," Valerie snaps, "and for that we need a hospital."

"No hospital," Danny groans. Unimaginable pain splashes his every nerve with acid as he speaks. He struggles in the dark room, unable to see his hands, unable to see much of anything. He reaches for the thread but he's lost it somewhere in the onslaught of pain. He doesn't care when or where he is, just please, anywhere but here, any time but now. Anything else. Grasping at nothing, he whimpers, _"Not here."_

"—can't believe he's even still talking," Valerie is saying incredulously.

The dark figures looming over him shift. One moves closer than the others and Danny's reaching hand hits something firm and warm. Tucker's voice cuts through the haze, "I got you, Danny. What, did you forget I'm a type O? I'm a universal donor, which means you can thank me later."

Sam takes charge like it's a lifeline. "Valerie, go get some rubbing alcohol."

Danny shakes his head. Anywhere but here. _Anywhere_. "A typo?" _Please_. "Just hit backspace..." A flurry of stars birth and die all in Valerie's bedroom and Danny finally passes out.

He wakes in the night to someone giving him CPR; he doesn't know who. His breath comes ragged and his entire body shudders when he draws each breath, like it's his first time touching oxygen. They try to speak to him again but he acknowledges only the basest commands. Follow this light with your eyes. Nod if you can hear me.

Every time he wakes up he nods.

Daylight streams in striped bands through the dusty room and Valerie is screaming at Sam. Tucker is spilling water down Danny's neck as he tries to get him to swallow some. The phone in Danny's pocket is ringing and Sam fishes it out to turn it off. He tries to nod, but she's not looking. The room is pink and, briefly, Danny is alone.

The cracks in the blinds are magenta in the mirror on Valerie's closet door and this time Danny knows that it's sunrise.

He's lying prone on the floor under a thick blue comforter, head propped up on a throw pillow. For a moment all he does is breathe in the stillness. The world echoes a ghost of motion, the way a Ferris wheel does when it creaks at last to a stop, compartments swinging loose in the wind. The closet mirror is smooth, unbroken. He casts his eyes upward to the bottle of shells atop the dresser. Small. Delicate. Intact. Slowly, gently, Danny lifts a stiff arm toward his chest to survey the damage, and is surprised to find several bandages wrapping his forearm. He eyes the polished closet mirror again as he gingerly pokes his way along his ribs. He starts to sit up, but thinks twice of it and lays flat.

This time he hears the door _click_ before it opens and his arm drops to the floor like a brick. Eyes shut, he desperately evens his ragged breathing as Valerie crouches next to him.

"Come on, Danny," she says softly. "You gotta drink something." He can do nothing but pretend to groggily waken as she lifts his head and presses the cold glass to his lips. He blinks, eyes unfocused, and sputters on the water for effect before swallowing some. "You awake yet, Danny?" she asks keenly as he falls back onto the pillow. He blinks at her again, hearing another lost echo. _What the hell are you?_ He must have looked too aware for a moment because Valerie straightens, her free hand tightening around something in the pocket of her hoodie.

Danny lets his eyes glass over. "Sam?" he asks. He feels like such a coward.

Valerie sighs. "Guess not." The door clicks shut behind her and Danny is left to ruminate alone in the dying pink of the morning.

* * *

 _Next chapter:_

. . .

 **Epitaph**

. . .


	5. Epitaph

Hello everyone. No, Nexus is not dead! I have been stuck with intense writer's block on this story for months and months now while I decide between two possible and equally tantalizing endings. When I started this story I thought when I got to the crossroads I'd know which one to pick, but boy I thought wrong. I've never had this problem before so it's been tough moving past it. I think I'm finally ready to finish this story though. Thank you for all the intervening words of encouragement, by the way. Every time I receive a kind review it reminds me of my passion for this story. Hopefully it doesn't take nearly as long to get the next chapter out. There's only two left! Home stretch, folks.

xoxo

* * *

 **. . .**

 **Epitaph**

 **. . .**

 _Confusion will be my epitaph_

 _as I crawl a cracked and broken path._

 _If we make it we can all sit back and laugh,_

 _but I fear tomorrow I'll be crying._

(King Crimson, 1969)

 **. . .**

Daylight waxes and wanes in hues of amniotic red through Danny's eyelids.

Sam comes and goes as her phone rings every hour or so, shutting the bedroom door behind her to talk in the hall. Sometimes her muffled voice is loud and heated, yet at other times he can scarcely hear her for its softness. Under it all is the unwavering _shnk shnk shnk_ of Tucker tossing that hacky sack up and down. Is he alright? The idea that an electronic hasn't touched Tucker's hands all day is unnerving...

Danny tracks the day as best he can. An hour for him becomes the time that passes between Valerie's regular appearances. All day long she's silent, except when she kneels by his head, checking his vitals and poking at his bandages and trying in vain to nudge him awake. His stomach growls when she mentions food but he dutifully snores.

Her voice is silk and honey but all he can hear when she speaks is the dread simmering beneath. Carefully veiled. _What the hell are you?_

Playing dead is torture.

Lights dance behind his eyes. He squeezes them more tightly shut but the lights only get brighter, more erratic. Vaguely he recalls a biology lesson from sophomore year biology in which Ms. Whalen asserted that human eyes were dimly bioluminescent, or something like that. He can't tell if he's seeing those regular squirming phosphenes everyone sees or if it's something more. Coherent for the first time in days, Danny finds he'd rather be asleep again. This whole timeline, time travel, time-space distortion deal is more Tucker's idea of a good time, not Danny's. When they were kids they used to watch _Star Trek_ together into the early hours of the morning, but they were tuning in for different reasons. Danny's never had much of a penchant for mystery, or provoking ethical quandaries, or gritty sci-fi puzzles. He just likes stars, y'know?

Danny huffs deeply and rolls over on Valerie's floor, awakening a hundred sore muscles.

So what would Tuck think of all this? Should he tell him about Clockwork? About the crazy rainbow threads? About the confrontation with Valerie that never happened? But then—can he really classify it as 'didn't happen?' The partially-healed gash on his arm stings in protest; a glaring mirror shard gleams out at him from the dark.

He groans and rolls over again, resisting the urge to press his pillow to his face in frustration. The philosophical and moral implications of his messing with time are not something he wants to spend his returning energy on. He's already got enough to worry about between his parents and Val without pondering the significance of it all in the grand scheme of things, or lingering around hallways he's already walled off. That's for Clockwork to worry about, not Danny. He just wants to get through this. Here. Now. _Worry about the present, Fenton!_ He rolls over again, desperately trying to think about nothing.

"Is he okay?" Tucker asks in alarm across the room.

A presence near his right side. "He's fine," Valerie asserts. "Probably just dreaming."

If only, if only.

Phosphenes or threads (or both?) dance a geometric procession across his eyelids, begging for attention. Danny gives all his attention instead to the cut on his arm and the slowly mending stab wound on his chest. Maybe he's doing it consciously and maybe not, but it's easy to believe he's writing the changes as he observes each muscle fiber and tendon as they rebuild themselves. He's never focused on the healing process much before this mess (finding it more fun to take an advil and go to sleep) but it's surprisingly easy to recognize the functions of the fast-forwarded repair. It's weird… and it helps the time pass more quickly.

Cells wriggle and divide until finally they rhyme and all the while Danny pretends he sees nothing but darkness.

It isn't until later that night that Danny gets a chance to move. The front door twangs against the doorstop and Valerie curses softly, flying to shut her bedroom door. Four hands close around Danny's arms and it's hard not to smile at Tucker's whispered apology as he and Sam shove him into the cavity beneath Valerie's bed.

"I'm home, Valerie," someone calls. Danny's stomach flips over—he hasn't even thought about her dad yet. "Are your friends still over?"

"Yeah," she calls back. "Can they stay one more night?"

Under the bed, Danny opens his eyes. The dust and darkness hold a faint glittery quality that tugs him in every direction and he closes his eyes to it. He doesn't care to look any closer. He still has whiplash from the last time he touched one of those stupid strings.

Mr. Gray knocks hesitantly on her door and it creaks open. Danny can practically see his face, genial and welcoming. It's always been impossible to feel intimidated by that man, short and stout but rounded on all edges. "Yes, of course," he answers tiredly. "Any word on…"

"No," Sam supplies, brisk and direct like usual. "He hasn't turned up yet."

"Oh." Mr. Gray clears his throat. "Sorry to hear that. It's a crying shame… I'm sure he'll turn up soon, at any rate. You two stay as long as you need, okay?"

"Thanks, Dad."

As soon as he leaves Valerie falls against the door. "That time was too close," she hisses. "We are really starting to push our luck, here."

"Luck?" Sam snorts. "I think our 'luck' ran out three days ago."

Valerie only sighs, as if she's heard this all before. "I'm going to take a shower. If you're gonna pull him out then make damn sure you lock my door first."

As soon as the water pipes jostle to life in the wall behind him, Danny acts. Pushing his upper body out into the open he whispers, "Hey."

"Whuh.. Danny?"

They pause in anticlimactic shock and Danny takes the moment to confuse them—and hopefully keep them from loudly giving away that fact that he's awake. Valerie's bathroom is far too close to her room. "I've been awake since this morning," he rushes. "Sorry for not letting you know sooner, it's just, with Valerie here..."

He loses momentum, biting his lip in thought. How much to tell them? Will they think he's lost his mind? Or there's that other intrusive thought: _What if you_ have _lost your mind?_

Overlooking his hesitance, Tucker is already pulling him out from under the bed while Sam locks the door. "Honestly, that might've been best," she whispers. They both come to crouch on the carpet by Danny in earnest, hovering in the fear that he may collapse any moment. Between them they looked exhausted enough to sleep for a week. Irrational guilt crushes him and he hardly hears Sam when she goes on, her vocal chords still somewhat raw. "Valerie is suspicious. Like, _hella_ suspicious, Danny."

"Can't blame her," Danny mutters. "Man, coming here was such a bad idea. She can't know about me, she can't know we know about her." He drags a hand down his face. Across the room the closet mirror taunts him with its impeccable sheen, it's stainless reflection twisting Valerie's little hideout into a place twice as big. "Not yet, anyway. Not now." Somewhere, he knows, it's shattering. But, "Not here."

"You kept saying that," Tucker chuckles in that nervous way he does, "when we were trying to figure out how to do a blood transfusion without proper equipment. Didn't know what you meant. Still don't..."

Danny looks past the indirect question to the sallow bags below Tucker's eyes. "Type O," he wonders with incredulity, gears clicking into place in his mind with heavy, horrible clunks. The threads between them shine out for a split second before Danny turns away, choking. Oh god. "Tucker, you didn't have to—"

"Stop." Tucker grins, managing to look unruffled. "I know I overuse this phrase but I've never meant it more. _Don't mention it._ I'm serious, I'll never be able to look at the color red again. Or needles. So please, for the love of god, don't mention it." He shudders before continuing. "Besides, now we really are blood brothers."

"Oh, _ha ha_ , Tucker," Sam laughs scaldingly. "Look, I know you're recovering but we need to get out of here yesterday. How are you feeling?"

His hand moves automatically to the bandages at his side. There's nothing there now but a faint soreness, like he did nothing more than bump into a piece of furniture. "I'm alright," he understates. When Sam opens her mouth to argue he rolls his eyes and phases off the gauze in one swift motion.

Tucker pales and throws his arms up over his eyes before he can see, but Sam gasps. "But, but _how?_ "

The ragged scar stretching across the bottom-left side of his ribcage already appears weeks old. He trails one finger across it, feeling nothing. "I—I don't know." He didn't expect it to be this healed. The damage had been so deep. _Broken noses_ normally take him longer than this, and that's nothing.

"I've never seen you heal this fast from something so serious."

Internal monologue comes back at him from another timeline. _This is real._ "Guys…" He wrestles with his thoughts, wringing his hands. "I gotta come clean now, before this gets even weirder." _Because at this rate, it'll be weirder if it doesn't._ "There's more going on than you know."

Tucker holds a halting hand up as silence replaces the the clamoring of the pipes. "Dang it, she'll be back any second."

Sam lurches to her feet and starts to run around the room, grabbing their various belongings that have been scattered about Valerie's bedroom. "Hang on," Danny reasons, "we can't just disappear." There couldn't be anything more suspicious than that.

"So, what then?" Sam pauses, one of Tucker's crumpled t-shirts in one hand and her boots in the other. "You wanna be the one to explain this mess?"

"We have to give her something," Tucker reasons, "or she'll jump to the worst conclusion."

In exasperation, Sam drops everything to the floor and throws her hands out palm-up, begging of the ceiling fan, "What possible conclusion could be worse than the truth?"

Tucker gives her a frazzled ' _I don't fucking know why are you asking me'_ look right as the bathroom door opens down the hall. Danny rag dolls onto his wrinkled blanket just in time for the three sharp knocks. "Any change?" Valerie wonders as she reclaims her space.

 _Shnk. Shnk._ Tucker is back to tossing the hacky sack. "Nope. Just as comatose as ever."

Great. Back to playing dead. Maybe he should just confront her now and… and what? Give her half the truth this time and hope it's good enough? And if it's not, then what? He just hitches a ride back to the starting line again? If that's his stupid half-assed plan then what's stopping him from going back before he even got stabbed in the first place? He could stop all this from ever happening. He never would've had to endure the injury in the first place, or stand at that library window deciding between two fates each worse than the last, or argue with his parents over the right to live, or confess to Valerie…

But no. No, it's not that simple and he knows it.

The path that led him from the broken mirror back to the horrific blood transfusion was unstable and erratic. Even to himself, he can't pretend he had any control over it at all. It wasn't like traveling—not in a straight line, not even backwards. It was like trying to stand up on roundabout at a playground; the idea that he had some sort of say in when and where he was finally flung off the ride is laughable. No, it wouldn't be wise to put any trust in the threads at all. The truth of the matter is that he has no idea how they work or what consequences lie in wait if he continues interacting with them. If he could, he'd go back to being blissfully unaware of their existence.

Valerie stays awake long into the night, typing away on her computer, scratching unknowable things into a notebook, tinkering with something that sounds like a miniature hand drill. Sam and Tucker stay silent, sighing loudly to themselves every so often in impatience. Valerie either ignores them or doesn't notice.

Tucker finally gives up around the time that Valerie pulls a book from the shelf and flips through the pages. There's a soft thump as a pillow lands next to Danny's head on the floor, and Tucker throws himself down tiredly. "Night guys," he yawns. "Don't stay up past your bedtime."

Two identical derisive snorts from across the room reaffirm that both Val and Sam are still wide awake. It takes Valerie at least another hour to go to sleep. But finally she gives up and turns in, tossing her book on the floor next to his head.

When she begins to snore Danny opens his eyes.

Sam is still sitting up, tapping away on her phone on the other side of the room, leaning against the closet door. Tiptoeing as soundlessly as he can, he crosses toward Valerie's window and motions for Sam to follow. After sleeping for days, he's not tired at all. What he needs is to talk.

Pocketing her phone, Sam glances at Valerie to make sure she's sleeping before going over to the window. When he offers her his hand she takes it. Together they step intangibly through the potted cactus onto the grated fire escape outside.

When he releases her, her hair immediately whips to life, lashing at her face. Wind whistles through the metal stairwell and she turns away from the edge to hit him with a sarcastic scowl. "Well this isn't risky at all."

Danny doesn't care. He knows it's risky but he is so freaking done with deciding things by himself. He needs help, goddammit. Leaning against the window, he slides listlessly to the floor. "I don't know what to do, okay?" he whispers but it comes out louder than he means. "I don't know what to do!"

Concern creeps back into Sam's expression and she takes a seat beside him, one hand on his knee. "Hey, calm down. Everything's fine. You're all healed and we'll figure out the rest."

Danny shakes his head, wringing his hair with his hands. "No, no, it's _not_ fine, Sam, nothing is fine." The dam opens and everything comes spilling out at once. "Clockwork showed up when my parents were chasing me and told me if I didn't get it right then everything was fucked, so I tried to get creative but I think I just made everything infinitely worse and now instead of just worrying about my parents hating me or even about dying I'm worried about screwing up the entire timestream. This sucks!"

"Wait… what? Clockwork showed up?"

"Just… nothing. It's fine." Danny realizes they'll be out here all night if he goes into any more detail. He buries his face in his hands. "Don't worry about it. All I really wanted to know was if you've talked to Jazz. Is she okay?"

Sam withdraws her hand from his knee to pull out her phone. "Yeah, Danny. She's okay." Scrolling through her call log, she nudges Danny so he can see about a million calls from his sister. "Her skull was fractured but it was extremely small. She's really fine. She's been home since yesterday and she's been calling me every five minutes since we got here. She wants to kick your ass for coming here." She darkens her screen and stows the phone again, eyeing Danny. "Me too, kinda."

Danny just sighs. It's good to hear she's alright, but he can't get the picture of her bleeding out of his head. Her scream. Her body going limp. "I believe you," he says, "but I don't know if I'll feel better until I see her."

"Listen…" Sam stretches her legs out, matching Danny's position. They're both getting taller these days. Their feet almost reach the railing on the edge of the landing. "Jazz has been asking some really weird questions. What exactly happened between you and your parents?"

"Ugh, you really don't wanna know." His head raps on the wall as he tries not to think about it. "How am I supposed to convince them I'm good, Sam? I'm used to just… beating everyone into submission. I dunno how to fight a war with words. I've tried appealing to their morality, their curiosity, their freakin' human nature. If that doesn't work then what will?"

For a long moment Sam mulls over his question. She taps her bare feet together. "I don't know," she answers at length. "Maybe… Maybe there isn't anything you can say to convince them."

"Yeah. That's crossed my mind."

Sam shakes her head like he's misunderstood her. "Maybe we have to fight dirty."

"I already feel like I've fought dirty, Sam. All it did was make things messier." He thinks of the last words he spoke to his parents, knowing that at this moment they probably believe their son to be dead and Phantom to be responsible.

"No, I mean that maybe we're looking at the problem from the wrong angle. Instead of trying to convince them you're good, maybe you need to convince them that they're not as good as they think they are."

That catches Danny's attention. He stops looking at her legs. Sam's watching him with a wry expression that makes him feel strangely exposed. "What do you mean?"

"Think about it," she whispers excitedly. "They're so set in their ways that they don't even hear your argument because it doesn't fit in with their worldview. You gotta _shift their worldview,_ Danny. Make them doubt themselves. Make them doubt everything they know. Then, and only then, will they hear you."

Danny shrugs, unable to quite match her enthusiasm. The moon is almost full tonight. Or maybe it's recently been full… He realizes with a start that he doesn't know. The thought troubles him more than he can say; he's never lost track of the moon phases before. In this moment he feels more lost than he's ever felt in his life.

"If only I knew how to do that," he tells her sadly.

But Sam has already made up her mind, and her voice is full of determination. "There's a way, Danny. You know your parents better than anyone, and you're smarter than you give yourself credit for. If there wasn't a way then Clockwork wouldn't have come to see you. You know that."

"Yeah. I know."

He's too mentally exhausted to explain about the whole Clockwork thing. He rests his head on her shoulder, briefly closing his eyes. As always, she tenses a bit at the show of affection but she lets him have this one. He's grateful. Loathe as he is to admit weakness, he _really_ needs a friend right now, and even though she's only touched the surface with her advice it's lifted him more than he could possibly have asked for. For a long minute, out here on the fire escape in the dark, he feels like she could be right. Everything could be alright.

The now-familiar threads flare up with a couple of new colors around them, pulsing with life. Danny is still trying vainly not to notice them but it's so difficult when they outshine the moon in every spectrum. So he studies them quietly, trying to decide how best to broach the subject with Sam. If only he better understood what they are then maybe he could actually use them to his advantage. Thinking about what Sam said about looking at the problem from the wrong angle, he feels like some kind of all-important discovery is at the tip of his tongue when Sam breaks the silence with a thoughtful, "Huh."

Danny swivels his head to look up at her. "What?"

"Just had déjà vu." She shakes her head to clear the feeling and her hair tickles his nose.

The mundaneness of her statement in context with their previous conversation pleases him, somehow. A tired smile strikes his face like a match. "Again?" he jokes. "That's like… the twelfth time this week."

It's true, although 'this week' really feels like a lifetime ago. Before the ghost fight in his backyard and the subsequent shitshow, the week was actually rather boring. The only thing worthy of remembrance is that Sam was complaining of déjà vu all week long. It became a source of great amusement between Danny and Tucker, who began a teasing game of trying to guess when it was about to happen.

"It was really strong this time." Her hands ball into fists on her lap. "I know this has happened before. I mean, I'm not crazy. I know it hasn't, but… I feel like in some way, it _has,_ you know?"

Danny laughs. That doesn't make any sense at all, but then, has anything else in the past few days made sense? Besides, he likes it when she gets all creepy and mystical. "You're weird, Sam. But good weird." She makes him feel less weird.

Sam snorts, and the tension blows away with the erratic wind. "Whatever. Between the two of us, you win the weird contest hands down, Fenton."

"Whatever yourself," he snorts back. "Your life would be boring without me."

Sam taps her feet together. "Suppose you're right." The threads twist with life again, braiding into impossible patterns.

"I have to go home in the morning," he says after a long period of silence. "I've already put this off too long." It's wrong to let his parents suffer like that.

The movement of her shoulder under his cheek tells him she's nodding in agreement. "Tucker and I will be with you in case it goes wrong."

Eventually the howling wind becomes too much, and they decide to turn in. Together they slip intangibly back into the dark bedroom and part ways to go to sleep, Danny on the floor by the bed and Sam on her blanket by the mirror. As tumultuous as his stomach feels at the prospect of facing his parents, Danny feels strengthened by his talk with Sam, like he can totally do this. He can. He just has to figure out how to shake his parents from their high place.

It feels like only a minute later that he's being shaken roughly awake. "Wha… what?" He registers Tucker's frantic face. "Tuck?" he pushes Tucker's arms off his chest and sits upright without even thinking of Valerie seeing. "What's wrong?"

"Dude," he yells in full panic, "Valerie's gone. And look." He shoves a piece of paper in Danny's face, too close for him to actually see any of the words. Danny blinks at it groggily. Tucker groans, "Man, what did you _do?"_

Suddenly Danny snaps awake, and snatches the paper from Tucker's hand.

 _I saw you last night, Danny. If you want to keep me in the dark, fine. So be it. I'll get to the bottom of this without your help._

 _-V_

Sam is awake now and has stumbled drearily across the room to see what's going on. When she registers the words on the page she grabs it, horror dawning on her as swiftly as it dawned on Danny. There's only one thing Valerie could be talking about here. She must've seen them coming in through the wall last night. God, how could he be so stupid?

"Fuck," Sam whispers. "Fuck! Where'd she go, Tucker?"

Tucker waved his arms wildly. "I don't know! She was gone when I woke up. I've only been awake for like twenty seconds. What the heck is she talking about anyway? Danny, you moron, what did you do?"

Meanwhile Sam is pacing the room, crumpling the paper into an unrecognizable ball. "Okay, we need to make a plan. We need to search for her before she does any damage or tells anyone what she—"

Everyone freezes as Sam's phone began to ring in her pocket.

Slowly she pulls it out and all three of them lean over it comically, all of them expecting it to be Valerie. But it isn't. The ringtone marches on. _Jazz calling_.

Before anyone else can react, Danny grabs the phone and answers it. "Jazz?" he breathes.

On the phone her voice carries that tinny quality that all voices do, but it's still so familiar. "Danny?" He smiles as her voice comes through the line. "Oh, Danny, oh my god you're alright!" Her voice breaks and she starts to cry. Danny presses the phone to his forehead in sweet relief. He hasn't truly believed she was fine until this very moment.

"I'm so glad you're okay," he says, distracted momentarily from the whole Valerie problem. Jazz sniffles herself into silence. "When you hit the side of the house, I thought…"

"Yeah," she says, "I'm fine. I'm glad you're okay too, little brother. But we might have a problem. Can I ask you something?"

Suspicious at Jazz's sudden shift in tone, Danny eyes Sam and Tucker, a little bit of familiar dread creeping into his heart. "Uh… yeah. What?"

Jazz drops to a whisper. "Why is Valerie Gray in the kitchen with mom and dad?"


	6. Yellow Elevator 2

If you're one of the people that've been following this story since the beginning last year, I highly recommend giving the first couple chapters a reread as we come up here on the final two chapters, in order to receive the full impact. Optional, of course, but I _very strongly_ recommend it.

* * *

. . .

 **Yellow Elevator #2**

. . .

 _I understand that I exist in the between_

 _of what was and what will be in those blurry vision scenes_

 _that appear and pass us by and for a moment get you high,_

' _til you find your way back down._

 _Become the truth you've found._

(The Black Angels, 2010)

. . .

Hand in hand the three friends fly over the city. The wind howls around them; clouds blew in overnight and now hang so low over the city in some places that the highest stories of the tallest buildings fade into gray. It takes only ten minutes to get across the city. When he descends towards his own street he ducks into an alley (the same alley where Clockwork reminded him that dying blows) and transforms back. The sun is coming up over the mountains and it looks distinctly like they're on fire, but it won't be out for long before it moves behind the clouds. Already shadows have begun to engulf the city block.

In tense silence they head up the street toward Danny's house. Danny really isn't sure what he expects to find at this point, or what he expects to say. They're still a few houses away when he sees her.

Out in front of FentonWorks Valerie is sitting on the steps, and rises when they near her. She shows no surprise at all to see him awake. To see him here. They approach her warily, Tucker and Sam flanking him on each side, and Valerie crosses her arms, unimpressed. It's obvious she doesn't appreciate being treated like a loose panther.

"You never told me about your portal accident."

Danny flinches. He rests one hand on the decorative orb at the bottom of the banister, highly aware of the tactical advantage she's placed herself in by standing on the top stair with her back to the door. She's already viewing him as a threat. Doesn't bode well. "It never came up," he offers weakly.

"So," she says. "What's the story? I know you're different. There's something…" She trails off, biting her lip hard. _What the hell are you?_ he hears, and blinks hard to rid the voice from his head. Staying grounded in the present is a physical exertion. "I don't know what it is. But it's there, Danny, and apparently it always has been. I deserve to know." There's strength in her stance but her eyes are only sad. "It's like I don't even know who you are. I guess I never did."

The betrayal on her face stirs up some intense and negative emotions. She's not being fair. It's not like he's the only one in the wrong here. "We've all got our secrets," he snaps defensively.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she snaps back.

Moving onto the first stair between them in a not-so-subtle attempt to defuse the rising tension, Tucker shoots Valerie an unreadable look. "It means what it means, Valerie."

"What did you say to his parents?" Sam interjects, clearly unable to wait any longer.

Valerie glares at her. "I didn't tell them anything. Relax. I just asked questions. Whatever your freaky secret is, they don't seem to know it."

With a snarl Sam tries to stomp up the stairs but Tucker thrusts his arm out to stop her. "Listen, Valerie, I know you're confused but there's nothing wrong with Danny. We can explain all of this."

"So explain it!" she bursts, throwing her hands out, addressing Tucker only now, since he's placed himself at the head of the party. "Explain how his injury healed at a gazillion times the rate it should've. Explain why you three were hiding out at my house for three days. Explain why you couldn't take him to a hospital, like anyone who wasn't _totally insane_ would have. Oh, and maybe you can explain how he phased through my bedroom wall like a _ghost_. Maybe we should start there, huh Tucker? Maybe we should start there."

Danny wonders if he looks at sick as he feels.

"All valid questions," Tucker chuckles nervously. "But we really need to see Danny's parents. He's been missing for four days now. We need to go see them. They probably think he's dead, Valerie."

Valerie refolds her arms, staring Danny right in the eye. "Maybe _I think_ he's dead."

On the other side of Tucker, Sam snorts. "Come on Valerie, you don't really think that."

The stone cold look in Valerie's eyes say otherwise.

"Val," Danny says hopelessly. "I know this is crazy but I can't give you all the answers you want right here and now. You have to give me time. Don't you trust me?"

Valerie considers his words and pushes past Tucker down the steps onto the sidewalk where Danny stands. Instinctively he takes a step back, turning his shoulder toward her, his chest away toward the street. Defense 101. But it's the wrong move and he knows it instantly.

When she speaks again her voice is very level, like she's been practicing these words all morning. "If you leave without explaining this, then no. I will never trust you again and I can't be held accountable for what I'll do to figure you out."

So there's nothing to be done about it then. He can't just open up with his whole life story here, not when he's seen what happens when he goes all in for the whole truth. He needs more time but she won't give in, and beyond this door his parents are waiting. He closes his eyes to shut out the blinding threads. It feels like they're strangling him. _I know I have to make a choice but how do I know what's right when every direction seems wrong?_

Jamming his hands into his pockets, he casts his eyes downward.

"Well, this blows. I always hoped we'd get back to being friends someday, after you worked through all that stuff you thought you had to do."

Valerie narrows her eyes. "Still working through it."

"I know," he replies grimly. "We all have our secrets. Guess I'll be seeing you around, then."

"Yes," she agrees. "You will."

As she stalks away down the street, Danny can't fight the feeling that he's just made his most formidable enemy. But he moves up the stairs anyway. He's made his trade. Valerie's trust for his parents'. There's no going back now.

But of course, that's assuming he _can_ convince his parents.

"Guys?" he says softly, one hand on the doorknob. "I think maybe you should wait outside." They try to argue but Danny already decided this a long time ago. Years ago. When it came time to face his parents, he's always known he should do it alone.

The door creaks open. Where's Jazz? His parents are whispering loudly in the kitchen. He pushes through a vein of threads down the hall and into the dining area, wondering idly if he's following the threads or if they're following him. Jack and Maddie are standing by the sink and at first they don't see him.

"Hi," he announces meekly.

Silence. Stares. Then, commotion. In their excitement and relief they're spouting so many words and questions that Danny can't understand anything they're saying. Jack scoops him up into a crushing bear hug before Maddie rushes forward to pry Danny loose, scolding Jack and then launching an inspection and questionnaire on Danny's health.

"I'm fine," Danny insists a little brusquely, though he's relieved to see his parents in a non-battle setting. He's missed them terribly. His parents, not the ghost hunters.

Jack ignores Maddie's inspection and tugs Danny into another hug. "Where have you _been_ , Danno? We were worried to pieces. Phantom was here and he said you'd been captured or somethingㅡ"

"I'm fine," Danny interjects again. He really wants to stress that. "Seriously. Safe and sound."

Maddie pulls him out of his dad's embrace and takes his face in hand, like she's switching her inspection from physical to mental. "One of your old friends was just here, asking some odd questions. Why would she want to know if you've ever had any mishaps with our lab equipment?"

"Um…"

Danny averts his eyes but Maddie doesn't release her hold on his cheeks. "What have you gotten yourself into this time, Danny? Why did Phantom seem to know something had happened to you? What _did_ happen? Did Phantom kidnap you? Or did he save you?"

She sounds incredulous at the last possibility, but definitely open to it. That's good news, right?

"Lots of questions," Danny laughs anxiously. "Maybe you guys should sit down."

Reluctantly they follow his direction, and exchange loaded glances as Danny teeters between sitting and standing, finally deciding to stay standing. Should he lie to them or tell the truth? He could tell them everything and just hope against hope that their love for him outweighs their dedication to the facts. Or he could lie and say he was captured by a ghost and Phantom saved him. He was good at lying, and he was sure he could cook up something believable. It would certainly be easier.

But it would complicate telling them the truth about his life in the future. He grows dizzy as the threads increase steadily in quantity, transforming the dull kitchen into a dazzling place as he struggles to decide. So many paths. So many outcomes. So many choices. So many lives.

"Danny?" Jack asks. "Are you alright?"

Danny looks up and sees his dad rising from his chair, rushing toward him. But the wrinkles are gone from under his eyes. His hair is all black, no gray, and he's tall. So very, very tall. He bends down on one knee and retrieves a collapsible first-aid kit from a cargo pocket at his side.

"That must've been quite a tumble!" he says, rummaging through it. "Good thing I always carry this. Aha!" Triumphantly he holds up a bandaid and begins to unwrap it. "There. All better. Like it never happened. And we should probably pretend it didn't, too. Your mom doesn't need to know I was letting you slide down the stairs on the wakeboard, right?"

Danny grins and vigorously shakes his head. His dad grips his shoulders hard, looking concerned. Danny shakes off the confusion and brushes his dad off, who doesn't look any less worried.

"You look like you're gonna faint, Danny."

Maddie appears at Jack's side, worry equally dominating her face. "What's wrong, honey? You know you can tell us anything. It doesn't matter what it is."

"It does," Danny says. "It matters." He looks away, and sees someone running down the hall in his peripheral vision. A little streak of light trails off where they'd been. Unable to abate his sudden rush of hope he rushes to the archway and peers out into the hallway toward the stairwell.

"Where are you going?" he hears faintly from the kitchen, but the words are so far away. He steps into the hall.

"Jazz?" he calls.

It must be her. Who else would it be? He eyes the strand of light that led down the hall. Maybe if he just… The second he touches it the hall floods with light and everything is different. The paint on the walls is lavender instead of blue, and orangeish evening light floods the area outside the kitchen. A ball rolls out from from his bedroom upstairs, and Danny climbs upward toward it. A tiny redheaded girl comes flying out of the bedroom. She picks up the ball and tears away toward her own room in a fit of laughter. A smaller boy comes running out next to call her a handful of mean names.

Danny stops at the top of the stairs, looking down in amazement at the little boy. He tries to speak to him. The boy turns his way, looking around like perhaps he heard something. But he quickly loses interest and runs off to retrieve the stolen ball.

Watching him disappear into Jazz's room, Danny stands stock still among the flowing lights, knowing that he's missing something crucial. There's something here just beyond his reach. He eyes the nearest of the strings, and for a moment he can hear it buzzing with life. Sam's words come back to him. _Maybe we're looking at the problem from the wrong angle._

He follows himself down the hall and peeks into Jazz's room.

The only person inside is his mother. She's folding laundry on Jazz's bed. She brushes her hair out of the way; it cascades down to the middle of her back. A nostalgic smile tugs at him. He remembers when her hair used to be that long. Suddenly she notices him.

"Hi, honey. Is the boy that was here yesterday going to be coming over to play again today? I liked him. What was his name?"

"Tucker," Danny answers.

"Right, that was it. Tell him he's welcome for dinner whenever he wants, would you?"

Danny nods, grumbling when she ruffles his hair as she passes him by with the empty laundry basket. "Yes, mom."

He watches her go. A trail of bright threads flare up in her wake and he suddenly remembers that this all happened years ago. He almost forgot. He moves his hand close to one of the threads but doesn't touch it, listening intently. Inside it he can hear voices, like a radio station on the verge of coming into range. Interesting. He's been thinking of the threads all this time as physical objects, but the thought occurs to him that perhaps they're not objects at all, but more like empty space. Like the cracks of light under closed doors.

At the bottom of the stairs, his mom turns back toward him. It looks like she's been crying. It's dark and difficult to tell without the hall light on, but he thinks her eyes are puffy and her cheeks are red. But her face is stoic. "Your father almost called the police this time," she tells him scathingly. "When you move out you can do whatever you like, Danny, but when you live under our house you follow our rules. That means coming home at a reasonable hour."

"You could have at least called," Jack says sadly, putting his arm around his wife's shoulder.

Maddie moves toward her son tentatively, taking the first step onto the stairwell. "You're really scaring us, Danny. Why don't you come back downstairs?"

Danny blinks, steadying himself with one hand on the wall. It's daytime. Is this the present? His parents stare up at him from the first floor. Déjà vu overwhelms him so completely that he has to turn away, and when he does he comes face to face with Jazz.

 _It's really Jazz._

Her head is bandaged and so is her hand, but she looks otherwise alive and well. Danny almost chokes. "Hey little brother," she offers with a smile, and holds out her arms to him.

He throws himself forward, embracing her with all the strength he has. "Hey Jazz."

"Hey what?"

Danny looks up, dazed. She's gone; her voice came from his bedroom. Peeking into the open doorway from the hall, he sees her there, sitting with himself on his bed. They're younger by a year or two. Glow stars shine down on the two of them from above, and the light of the TV sends blue shadows dancing around the dark room. She's busy wrapping gauze tightly around his knee, and shoots her brother a glance when he doesn't answer her right away.

"Hey what?" she repeats.

On the bed Danny blinks, momentarily disoriented, trying to remember what he'd been about to ask her. His sleep schedule has been off the wall this week and losing his train of thought is the worst part about it. "Nothing," he says. "I'm just mad that they got me this time." He frowns at his kneecap, trying to will the pain away from the second degree burn there. Of course it doesn't work like that. "Dad's aim isn't usually that good," he explains. "I wasn't watching him closely enough tonight."

Jazz sighs and pulls the medical tape out of her sweater pocket to begin sealing off her handiwork. "One of these days they might really hurt you, Danny. You have to tell them before it goes that far."

He shifts beside her uncomfortably. He doesn't like talking about this stuff. It's easier to pretend it doesn't exist. Sam and Tucker understand that, but Jazz will never settle for shoving it under the rug. It goes against her nature. The past few weeks have been kinda nice having her unexpectedly and suddenly in-the-know, but if he's being honest with himself, it was easier for him when she was in the dark. It's easier when everyone is in the dark.

"Hey I… I remembered what I was gonna ask." She stops taping and folds her hands on her lap, waiting patiently for him to find the right words. "If you had to convince mom and dad that ghosts could be good, how would you do it?"

Jazz laughs and lays down, reaching up to push in a loose tack on his NASA poster. "If I knew that I'd have done it already. In order to convince them ghosts can be good, we first have to get them to admit that ghosts are sentient. If we ever accomplish that we'll be on the home stretch."

Back in the hallway, Danny tears his eyes away from the memory. The lights in the house flicker all at once as his mother's voice echoes up from the basement laboratory. " _But ghosts aren't sentient."_

His legs are numb as he fumbles his way down the stairs. Someone in the basement is screaming. It's him and he knows it. The second stairwell is made of concrete and stretches out to his right, fading down into grey, then black, then fire. Music crackles in his left ear.

"Don't fire!" Tucker shouts in the distance.

Danny moves to the back door on the other side of the living room, drawn to it magnetically. The door is like fog to him, and outside the sun glares down from the west. Tucker shouts again from somewhere in the back alley. "He's too close, Sam! You don't have a clear shot!"

Walking across the backyard toward the broad-armed tree, Danny shields his eyes from the sunlight. He sees himself falling from the sky a few yards away, pursued closely by the ghost that started all of this. It's small but formidable, with long black tendrils fanning out behind it like a deep sea creature, with dark beady eyes that are hungry, cold, and dead. From the ground he watches Phantom returning to consciousness while he falls, struggling to right himself but ultimately crashing through the branches of the towering oak tree and hitting the ground below. He flinches, remembering how the breath was forced from his body.

Sam lurches over the wooden fence, Tucker scrambling after her belatedly, both trying to distract the ghost as Phantom wobbles to his feet. A cold hand grips Danny's lungs. He knows all too well what's about to happen. His head whips toward the back porch as the screen door flies open and ricochets off the wall. Jazz stumbles onto the porch, struggling with the buttons on the side of the thermos.

Danny tries to scream but he's voiceless. A world away. He can only observe as the ghost spots her and makes a beeline for the porch.

Phantom cups his hands around his mouth and bellows, "Jazz, get out of the way!"

She doesn't. She runs to the edge of the back steps, still trying to help. His parents burst onto the scene, coming around from the other side of the house, barreling through the gate with weapons raised toward the sun. But Danny knows they won't get there in time. The only one who can is Phantom, who rockets across the yard to stand between Jazz and the ghost as it raises a tendril to strike her down. Phantom blasts it away.

Across the yard Danny is still voiceless, still trying to scream. It can't happen this way again. It can't. This one mistake. This is it, this is the moment that Clockwork was talking about. The crossroads. The nexus. This is the moment around which everything pivots. This.

But it's happening. The ghost, angry to have been blocked so easily, goes into a frenzy and lashes out all it's tendrils at once, exploding the patio furniture into whirlwind of splinters, metal and wood. Jazz cries out as she flies backwards, then hits her head against the wall and falls limp to the ground. Phantom hits the wall soon after and sinks to his knees, clutching the long warped wire sticking out of his stomach. Danny clutches his own stomach, remembering the pain. The memory of it blinds him, and all around him those tantalizing threads whip on an invisible wind, lashing his skin. The mangled table umbrella is still partially attached to the wire in his stomach, and Phantom rasps when he tries to take a step forward but drags the whole umbrella with him. He braces himself to rip it out. But then he sees Jazz's limp body and falls to one knee again, eyes burning, toxic acid in color.

His parents are there already, Jack picking her up to cradle her in his arms. They turn their hateful eyes on the two ghosts.

"Stop," Danny cries out, and this time his voice is loud and clear. "Stop!" But no one hears him. Phantom bites his knuckles and rips the wire out in one smooth motion. His parents raise their guns as Phantom hurls the entire ruined umbrella at the attacking ghost. " _Stop,"_ Danny yells, running full tilt towards them now, having finally found his feet. Desperately he throws out his hand and like a tidal wave the threads rise with it, then just as quickly come crashing down around him in a sparkling display of chaotic light, shattering into a billion symmetrical pieces.

Danny slides to a halt as the ground recedes from beneath him. An endless array of stars surround him on all sides, organized in staggering columns and rows, proceeding neatly into the distance like layers of an infinite mirror. On a faraway frequency he hears himself shouting _stop._ Leaning toward the nearest star, he listens.

 _Stop._

He touches the star gently and it implodes. It's not a star at all but as big as a universe, a living, breathing tesseract, and he almost falls into it face first. He staggers backward, almost stumbling into another one.

 _Time is weird,_ he hears, _you think you know how it works and then_ _ㅡ_

The star flits away, leaving a dark void. He moves on to the next one. For what feels like an eternity he sifts through them, peering through pinholes into worlds beyond, until at last he finds one that fits. This star pulses, black and white and every color in between. It's there and also not. Somehow both matter and the absence thereof. _It's inside out,_ he thinks, _and outside in at the same time. A star with every other star inside..._

He reaches out. It floats on organic whims, an impossible geometric butterfly with wings that span to the edges of one universe, and he has to stand on his toes to take hold of it. As soon as he closes his hand around it the world lurches.

Grass. Sun. Warmth.

Danny opens his hand to find the tesseract is gone. He's found his way home again, somewhat. Everything is frozen in time. Sam is idling in place mid-jump over the fence, Tucker with one hand on the post, about to scramble after her. Phantom is on the ground under the oak, halfway to his feet.

A dignified calm washes over Danny, flooding him through with confidence. At last he understands what he has to do. Man, this feels good. He basks in it, leaning over his frozen self. In all his life he's never felt so powerful. He thinks back on Clockwork's words all those nights ago in the library, when he informed Danny that for the optimal future he would have to compromise an aspect of himself that he held dear. At the time he'd thought Clockwork was hinting that he'd have to play dirty, that he'd need to manipulate his parents to gain their trust. But that wasn't it. That wasn't it at all.

With one hand he grabs Phantom by the arm and pulls him out of his statuesque position to his feet. Phantom blinks, looking around wildly in confusion before settling his eyes on Danny.

"Uh, hello. What's up? Talk about woah," Phantom says. "Can't say I was expecting to see _you_ here today."

Danny grimaces. What a terrible joke. He can kinda see how the dry-humor thing gets old when you're stuck on the receiving end. "I don't have time to explain everything," he begins, "but something bad is about to happen. I'm here to change it."

Phantom raises both eyebrows at him. "Something bad enough to mess around with time? Must have been a real downer. What should I do?" He looks upward at the frozen ghost in the tree branches. "Or uh… not do?"

It's only been a few days since this happened but somehow it feels like an eternity. Danny reaches a hand out to rest it on Phantom's shoulder. It's almost like talking to a younger brother. He wants to protect himself but he knows that the best way is to let himself suffer a little first. "You need to transform back," he says. "Fight this battle as a human."

Phantom is baffled. "What? Why?"

Danny casts a look over his shoulder at the place where he knows their parents will emerge as soon as time resumes. "Because in a few seconds your parents will arrive, and what they see will define the course of your life from here onward."

Phantom whistles. "Well, shit."

"You can do this," Danny urges. "You've gotten through worse. And listen."

Phantom perks up, having become distracted by the ominous ghost in the tree again. "What?"

"Listen. This is important. You need to convince your parents that ghosts are sentient _before_ you can convince them to trust one. Long before."

Phantom blanches. "I know that. But what does that have to do with fighting this ghost? Uh oh. Today's not.. _The Day_ , is it? I dont think im ready for that conversation yet."

"Doesn't matter if you're ready or not," Danny says. "It's coming. You need to take the first step or you're going to trip down the stairs. Trust me."

"But _how?_ They think ghosts are below them. That they're not even lifeforms, or whatever. They think they know everything there is to know already. They aren't gonna listen to me!"

"So change their mind," Danny says. "Make them doubt themselves. Make them doubt everything they know. And if you get stuck… just try looking at the problem from a different angle."

Hitting him with quite the indignant look, Phantom flops dejectedly against the tree. "This might be the worst advice I've ever gotten."

"It's not advice, Danny, these are words to live by." If he doesn't listen then nothing will have been fixed and none of this will have been worth it. He needs to understand. "This is your only choice. I have been down the line and have seen all the others, and this is the only one worth living. You don't have to put your life in their hands, yet, just… shake their worldview. It's time. The rest will follow."

Phantom scratches his neck, staring up at the shadowy ghost. "Right. Shake their worldview… And the first step involves me getting my ass kicked as a human. Sounds like a solid plan."

"Trust me," Danny assures him, "you wouldn't like the alternatives. "

Phantom grins sideways at him, an odd calculating look in his eye. "Y'know," he says, "I have no idea why, but I kinda hate it when you appear the same age as me. It always weirds me out."

Danny matches the grin. "I think it's safe to say that it weirds me out more."

With a single salute, Phantom transforms. Operating on blind trust always means fighting against his better judgement, but he's learned not to argue when timelines are at stake. Human again, Danny looks over to beg one more answer from his unsolicited guide before he vanishes. But of course Clockwork is already gone. There's only empty space where he so recently stood.

Time resumes.


	7. Some Other Time

. . .

 **Some Other Time**

. . .

 _In a matter of a moment lost till the end of time,_

 _it's the evening of another day and the end of mine._

 _Now the starlight which has found me lost for a million years_

 _tries to linger as it fills my eyes till it disappears._

 _Could it be that somebody else is looking into my mind?_

 _Some other place,_

 _somewhere,_

 _some other time._

(The Alan Parsons Project, 1977)

. . .

As always, when time picks up it does so in full swing with Danny strung along and floundering in the wake. Inwardly he curses Clockwork's timing as the abyssal ghost resumes its nosedive toward him with a shriek. He drops into a defensive stance. As a human he is so woefully unprepared for this battle. He doesn't even have any weapons on him! This better be worth it.

But the ghost turns before it reaches him, toward the sound of the porch door swinging open. Jazz is there at the door, fumbling with the thermos. Dammit, she never did quite figure that thing out. She doesn't even see that the ghost is gunning for her now. Ever since it first appeared down by the park it hasn't shown any sort of motivation beyond causing panic and destruction, so Danny has a feeling it isn't on its way over to say hi. He's already in a dead sprint toward her when he breezes past Sam and Tuck in their place at the fence. They're both shouting something at him but he doesn't hear; he has tunnel vision for his sister. He beats the ghost there by only a fraction of a second, shoving Jazz out of the way to take the full brunt of the ghost's flailing limbs.

For a second he's airborne. Then his face connects with something solid and all he knows is agony: mind-numbing, hysterical agony.

It's a long minute of thrashing and clutching at his bleeding eye before he realizes Jazz is trying to help him to his feet. Somewhere out of sight he can hear his parents waging war on the ghost that dared attack their children. Reluctantly, he pulls his hand away from the gash that stretches up his left cheek all the way into his hairline and looks at his hand with his uninjured eye. The palm is soaked in blood.

The pain is more manageable now, though, now that he's starting to get used to the constant radiating sting. He lets Jazz pull him upright and tugs the thermos meekly from her hands. "Gimme that," he chides, and makes a mental note to teach her how to properly use this freaking thing as he aims it across the yard and sucks up the ghost that's causing all the trouble.

Sam and Tucker fly up the stairs, aghast when they see Danny's fresh injury up close. Tucker spins one-eighty to dry heave over the dented railing.

Sam throws her hands out incredulously, looking like she'd definitely slap him if his face wasn't bleeding. "Danny, why did youㅡ?" She cuts herself off sharply, looking at his parents as they approach across the yard. He knows what she wants to say anyway. _Why did you change back?_

"I'm fine," Danny assures her and Tucker, then again to Jazz who is refusing to let go of his arm. "Seriously, Jazz, it's alright." But he allows his parents to whisk him inside. The aftermath isn't hurting quite as much as getting the initial injury did but he hasn't opened his left eye yet, petrified that he won't be able to see out of it. He doesn't think the railing tore his actual eye, but he isn't eager to find out. "You know head injuries bleed heavily," Danny reminds his parents as they force him into a chair at the kitchen table. "It's not as bad as it looks." But his mom only presses a wet towel to his face and directs him to hold it there while she and his dad run upstairs to find the emergency first aid kit.

As soon as they disappear around the corner, Danny fixes his friends with his good eye. "Guys, I need to talk to mom and dad alone."

Taking a seat on the table, Sam uses another wet towel to dab some of the stray blood from Danny's arm and hand before it can get all over the kitchen. "They didn't see you change back. They hadn't gotten there yet so you're fine."

"You know this is gonna take days and days to heal." Slowly, he peels the dishtowel away from his face to point at the gash there. "They're gonna see Phantom with this." With the towel back in place, Danny takes a moment to close his eyes and try and steady his breathing. Was this what Clockwork really wanted all along? To force his hand? Surely there's a better way to broach this subject with his parents. The alternatives must have been real terrible if this is the lesser of all the evils.

"I dunno, Danny." Tucker won't look directly at him, but directs his words at the space over his left shoulder. "We could hide it," he suggests. "Or you could just not go ghost 'til it heals up?"

"Nah," Danny sighs. They haven't seen how deep the gash goes. He can feel it though; that railing brushed bone where he hit it. "I think this one's gonna scar."

Jazz maneuvers herself around to the front side of Danny, halfway between excited and terrified. There are voices at the top of the stairwell. "So, what?" Jazz whispers manically. "You're just gonna tell them?"

"Yes. I mean no," Danny frets. "Not all the way. But I need to start softening the blow."

Sam slides off the table, moving between Danny and the door as his parents footsteps near the kitchen. "We could stay," she whispers. "For backup."

"No. I can do this." Maybe Clockwork is right; this talk is long overdue. But still. The other roads must look pretty bleak if the ghost of time urged him onto _this_ terrifying one.

Jack and Maddie burst back into the kitchen then, bustling around Danny. Jack throws a metal case onto the table and begins immediately rummaging through it while Maddie checks the damage under the towel.

"After we stop the bleeding we can go to the hospital," Jack prattles, panicking as he searches for the items Maddie asks for. "I already called the ER to let them know we're on the way."

Danny clears his throat. "I'm not going to the hospital."

Maddie throws her hands to her hips then, accidentally spraying his arm with the antiseptic.

"I know you have an aversion to doctors, Danny, but you're going to have to suck it up. This is an emergency!"

At that proclamation, Danny can barely hold in a snort. His entire life is one ongoing emergency.

"No," he assures her, "it's not that I don't want to go. I _can't_ go."

He hears Sam hiss something under her breath, and twists in his seat to face his friends and sister. _Please let me do this,_ he begs with his one eye, and it takes a brief and intense staring contest before they finally give in. With a few furtive glances at the Fenton parents they file out of the kitchen, and a moment later the front door clicks shut.

Maddie watches the three of them go with her mouth hanging slightly open. She turns to Jack, who frowns back in confusion. Pressing her lips into a thin line, she tries to resume her treatment of the injury but quickly comes distracted. "Okay, Danny, what is this about?"

"We need to talk," Danny begins. "It's fine the way it is," he adds, impatient for his mom to finish wrapping the medical tape around his head to hold the gauze pad in place.

"I'm not done."

Danny tugs the roll of tape gently from her hands and rips the tape free from the roll, tying it off inelegantly in the back of his head. "There. Done." He needs to do this before he loses all his nerve. "Can you guys sit down? There's something I've been hiding from you for a long time and we need to talk about it before I chicken out."

"Is now _really_ the time?"

"Yes. Now. Right now." He says it with such confidence that it cuts through their panic and forces them to actually hear him.

After a beat, Maddie drops the tape and antiseptic spray in the first aid kit and takes a seat opposite him at the table. She removes her goggles and tosses them in the box as well, fixing him with a level gaze. Jack takes longer to find his senses, but eventually pulls a seat next to Maddie and leans back in the chair. It's awkward, and Danny coughs. What is this, a parent-teacher conference? But having the entire table between them does help a little with the anxiety coursing through his veins.

After a minute passes by and Danny still hasn't spoken, Maddie leans forward, her eyes wide with compassion. "You're starting to scare me a little, honey. Just come out with it. You know you can be honest with us."

Jack clears his throat. "Whatever it is, we'll still love you." He says it with a hint of hurt, like he's not sure why he needed to say it out loud.

But Danny isn't as certain. Can their love really transcend their worldview? _Come on, Danny, first step._ It's hard to have faith in Clockwork's plan when the self-proclaimed lord of time gave him almost nothing to go on. He's running blind here. _First step._ "The reason I can't go to the hospital is that my vitals would be red flagged." He takes a deep, rattling breath. No going back now. "The nurse would be required by law to alert the GIW."

In shock Maddie stands. "What! That can't be right. You must be confused. You must have hit your head harder thanㅡ"

"No," he asserts, "I'm not. I'm not confused." He waits for her to sit again, struggling with himself. "Please just… just listen." It would be easy to laugh, now. They haven't even gotten to the hard part yet. "You remember that accident I had with the portal freshman year, right? The one that turned it on."

They scoff. "Of course we remember," Jack says incredulously. "You were out of school for a week."

"And the _portal_ turned on."

Of course they remember. Why did he even ask that? Stupid. Mild claustrophobia is starting to set in, and Danny fidgets restlessly. "Yeah, that one. It did something to me. Uh… changed me."

Maddie frowns. "I don't understand. What are you saying?"

Danny drums his fingers erratically on his leg. It's so hard to concentrate with the entire left side of his face on fire and Clockwork's warning ringing in his ears. "I'm still the same," he insists, then grimaces. "Just… not… the same."

Maddie rises again, this time pushing her chair in. She's done sitting. "Danny, you are being very unclear."

"Just tell us what you mean, son."

"I can't go into it more specifically." Danny rises too, backing toward the wall until the hanging calendar brushes against his neck. "I will, soon, but we need to get something straight first." Danny looks at the empty archway and the dimly lit living room beyond the other side of the hall. Why didn't he beg his friends to stay? Why wasn't Clockwork more clear on what he was supposed to do? Finally he meets his parents demanding eyes. "Ghosts are sentient," he says with as much certainty as he can pack into his voice. "I know you don't agree, but it's true, and I won't tell you any more until you accept it."

Flabbergasted, Maddie steps toward him. "But ghosts aren'tㅡ!"

"What makes you so sure?" he shouts. "Where does this unwavering faith come from?" He lowers his voice at the last second, surprised by the ire in his own tone. _Where the hell did that come from?_ His mother is even more shocked than him, frozen where she stands.

"Don't talk to your mother that way," his father reprimands halfheartedly. The chair creaks under him. There's a questioning sort of sadness in his eyes. "We're listening, Danny."

Right. He wants to slap himself. _Calm down Fenton, jeez, you're still not even to the hard part yet._ "These past couple years I know I've had some issues," he continues in a far gentler tone. "Coming home late, not showing up for class…"

The chair creaks. Jack hmms and haws under his breath. "Something, something, tip of the iceberg."

Danny ignores that jab, knowing he probably deserves it. "The reason I've been acting that way is because I've been sort of studying ghosts on my own." This floors them. They both start shouting at once and Danny waits for them to quiet down, trying to remain as level as possible. "I've seen everything they are and everything they can do and I promise you there is more to them than you could possibly understand based on what you've seen." He looks down at the tile floor, hands in his pockets. "I know they're dead but it's not as simple as you think it is. They're actual beings with thoughts and emotions and motivations… Sure, some of them suck," he admits. "But some of them don't. That's not…"

He shakes his head. _One thing at a time,_ he reminds himself.

"It doesn't matter anyway. That's an argument for another day. What matters is that they _are_ sentient. Please," he begs. "Please, believe me."

"Danny, this is so out of nowhere." Maddie has moved back toward Jack and is hugging her arms close to her chest, the beginnings of fear creeping onto her face. "Why does this matter?"

"It just does," he whispers. The calendar tickles the back of his neck. "It always matters."

With a deep, troubled sigh, Jack settles one elbow on the table. "Look, kiddo. I couldn't begin to know what you mean by 'studying' ghosts, but your mother and I have been studying them for almost two decades. I know it can seem like they've got souls but the science isn't there. When it boils down to it, all they are is a cluster of electrical pulses, firing back and forth. A complicated mess of energy exchange. Like a machine of sorts. Sure they're complex, but nothing more."

A cloud moves away from the sun outside and a ray of sunlight glares off a dish in the sink, blinding his good eye. It's dazzling, the small rays refracting off it in every direction like a microstar, and it reminds him of something he can't quite put his finger on. Danny stares straight into it. The beginnings of an impossible idea have begun to take form. Just a complex arrangement of electrical pulses, huh? A mess of chemical energy exchange? Is that really all he is?

"What?" His mother startles him out of his daydream. "What do you mean _you_ are?"

Danny blinks. Did he say that out loud?

Suddenly his eyes widen as that infant idea materializes and slams into him, so brilliant he almost trips as he lurches away from his place at the wall. "That _is_ all I am," he says incredulously, and before they can process that he points at them. "You too. Both of you! That's all brains are!" He is almost giddy with excitement now as it spills out. "Human minds are really just a complex cluster of electrical pulses. All our organs are just a means of energy exchange. This is like, beginner's biology," he laughs, absolutely beside himself. He squares his shoulders to face his parents with an air of triumph. "Human bodies are no more than extremely complex machines, so, by your own logic, if ghosts aren't sentient then neither are you."

They stare at him silently for a long moment.

At long last Jack laughs. "Well I'll be darned. A father bested by his own son. I'll confess you have me stumped on that one."

He's unable to contain his mirth and meets his father's wry smile with a cheeky grin. "Mom?" he wonders, turning to her. He's always known it would be harder to convince her than Dad.

There's a faraway look on her face. She has her arms crossed, but slowly uncrosses them. "I don't… I suppose I would need more time to think up a counter-thesis for that."

 _Sigh._

Danny reclaims his seat, utterly dejected. "So you still don't believe it, then."

But she's thinking it over. "Not entirely," she ventures, "but to be honest, I'm considering some things now that I haven't before. I suppose by that logic our definition of sentience could be considered too narrow."

Not even daring to think he's won her yet, Danny is still cautious. "So you admit I could be right?" he asks. "That ghosts could be more than just empty echoes of memory?"

"Yes," she says, and he looks up when he feels her hand on his arm. "I'm saying that while it would mean change for an entire field of science, in a sense, you could be completely correct."

"Wow." Danny is surprised to find that his eyes were watering. "Thanks mom." Thinking about how many years they've dedicated to paranormal studies, he's amazed by how ready they are to consider his words. They must really trust him. "I never thought I'd convince you," he laughs, wiping at his uncovered eye. The injured one stings beneath its bandage. "I love you guys."

Running one hand through Danny's wild hair, Maddie presses her lips into a thin line. "We love you too, honey, but you're still scaring us. What is this all about?"

Right. Danny sobers up fast, leaning away from his mother's touch. Something, something, tip of the iceberg.

"I can't tell you all of it right away," he says apologetically. "I need time."

Having been sitting stock still this whole time, Jack finally rises from his seat at the table. "Danny, we're your parents," he scolds. "You can't keep us in the dark."

"Sorry," Danny replies, "but this is bigger than you and me. It's about more. I have… responsibilities," he settles on vaguely. "To people. I have to think about my safety in all of this."

"Danny!" Maddie steps away, a hand pressed to her heart. "You don't think we would harm you, do you?"

The chair scrapes as Jack practically flies around the table. "I don't know what could possibly have ever given you that idea!"

Danny's face darkens. Calmly, he waits for his dad to realize how utterly aggressive that action looked, but his dad doesn't realize it and he doesn't back down. _Fight or flight_ alarms start to go off in the primal part of his brain that he usually listens to, but Danny shuts it off and steels himself instead. "You would be surprised by all that you don't know. I want you guys to know everything eventually but we have to start out small." If he goes in all at once there could be hell to pay. Clockwork didn't say _give them your whole life story._ He said _take the first step, and the rest will follow._ Well, he's taken the first step and now he's banking on the rest to follow.

 _Don't let me down, here, Clockwork._

"Like with your portal accident?" Maddie offers calmly.

"Yeah," Danny latches on, "like with that. You'll find out sooner or later anyway, because of this." He sighs and points at his injury. "The portal accident was more than just an accident. It sort of…" He searches for more delicate words to say this, but gives up and dives in. "It created Phantom."

"Phantom? Like, the _ghost,_ Phantom?"

Danny rolls his eyes. What other Phantom is there?

"Now you're just talking crazy, Danno. How do you know that's true?"

"I know because I was there, remember? And…" A quick glance at the door. How fast could he escape if they tried to tackle him? "Because of the accident, the two of us are connected."

"Connected?" his mom repeats, her voice oddly hollow. "Connected how?"

He sighs with relief and a fraction of the tension leaves his limbs. They still aren't understanding. That's okay. It's better if they don't comprehend it all at once. "That's a question for another day," he answers. "I can't tell you any more until I know for sure you aren't going to hurt Phantom."

Completely offended, Maddie snaps at him. "Obviously we'll put hunting on hold until we've further investigated this 'sentience' idea."

"I think we would both appreciate that."

His father, meanwhile, is staring at Danny with an look of concentration so intense that he seems in danger of short-circuiting. "So you've got some kind of connection with the ghost kid, huh? Never woulda guessed it. It answers some questions but it raises so many more."

Danny shies away from his father's gaze, worried that he's going to figure it out before Danny has softened them up enough. "I'm not gonna answer any more," he says, "until I know for sure you aren't going to hurt him."

"Danny. If you really are connected to him as you say then we will not harm him." Maddie steps toward him cautiously, the gears whirring behind her eyes. It's clear that she's quickly running through all the increasingly unlikely possibilities, all the different ways that Danny could possibly be linked to a ghost. "But it would be nice to run some tests on you just toㅡ"

"No tests." He shakes his head vigorously, but regrets it right away when the pain flares up full force. He clutches at his bandage. "Not yet, Mom."

"Danny, you can't just drop this on us andㅡ"

"I'm not dropping it. But… I need to know that you're taking the sentience thing seriously before I go any farther. I've already told you more than I ever meant to. Would you…" An incredible amount of vulnerability bubbles up in his chest. He feels so small when he asks them. "Would you guys be willing to talk to him?"

They're quietly taken aback at the implication that he could easily arrange such a thing. After a short, silent conversation with each other, they agree. "Yes, actually," and, "We would."

"Okay." He nods, mostly to himself. He was half hoping they'd say no. Better to just rip off the bandaid at this point, though, so he nods again more vigorously. "Okay. I'll go get him."

"What?" They're floored. "You mean right now?"

"Yeah." At the archway he looks back at them, nerves twisting his stomach into knots. "It'll be a minute. Wait here."

Danny crosses the house and exits into the backyard, where he takes a second to fist pump the air and laugh hysterically, then calm himself back down.

Okay. That went better than he'd ever have dreamed, but he's not exactly out of the rapids yet. With a quick survey to make sure the backyard is empty he triggers his transformation. Before he heads back inside he prods at the bandages wrapped around his head, thinking he should probably take these off; they would prompt too many complicated questions.

The thick drapes inside the living room are thankfully closed, providing Danny with a dark window to examine his face in as he painstakingly peels away the gauze his mother recently placed there. The injury is as gory as they come. It looks positively ghastly with the glowing ectoplasm bruising beneath the skin and scabbing where it meets the air. He leans forward, his stomach tightening as he prods the swollen skin around the long, uneven gash. It starts out on his cheekbone and takes a jagged path into his eyebrow and up his forehead. It's almost as long as his hand. He tries to pry the swollen eye open but it's too painful and he quickly decides that now isn't the time to find out if he's half blind on top of being half dead. Later.

When he edges into the kitchen, his parents are standing at attention. They twitch, but to their everlasting credit they manage not to reach for their weapons. Good sign.

"Where's Danny?" Jack asks.

Danny glances over his shoulder, hoping to imply their son is just upstairs or around the corner. "He said we should talk alone."

"So," Maddie clips. "What is the exact nature of your connection to my son?"

Danny lingers just inside the archway, fiddling with his gloves, fighting the urge to touch his cut. It hurts so much. "That's a topic for another day," he smiles, trying to look as nonthreatening as humanly possible. _(Haha. Humanly.)_ "One thing at a time, yeah?"

Maddie crosses to inspect him. He flinches as she raises her hand to his face but lets her fingers brush his skin without moving away. She touches his cheek just barely, eyes wide in shock as she examines the wound on his eye.

"Jack," she whispers.

Her husband is at her side, sharing in her incredulous realization. "I know, Mads." Together they stare at him, a million questions burning in their eyes. For the first time their gaze isn't shrouded in hate and hunger but something more akin to curiosity. It fills Danny with hope.

When his mother finally retracts her hand, her brain seems to be firing at full capacity in order to fit this newest piece into the half-solved puzzle. "This shouldn't be possible."

"No, it really shouldn't," Danny laughs. "But you'd be surprised to know how many impossible things happen every day in this city."

Jack clears his throat. "Danny would have us believe that inside your head there's a real consciousness. That all ghosts are like that. It flies in the face of all our research but he makes a compelling argument. What do you say to that, Phantom?"

Danny is just happy that for the first time they haven't called him _ghost_. "I say… do you have more faith in your son than in your research?"

They look at each other. "Yes," Maddie says. "Luckily for you, we do."

Danny beams, happier than he's felt in a very long time. He extends a professional hand. "So then," he says. "Friends?"

Jack shakes first. "Not enemies," he proclaims.

"I'll take it!" he says, and turns to leave.

"Not so fast," his mom exclaims. "You think you can just walk out of here without answering any of our questions?"

At the doorway Danny twists around. "You'll be seeing me again. Just take the rest of the day to soak this all in, okay? It's a lot to handle at once. Besides, we have all the time in the world."

Outside the front of the house Danny finds Jazz and Sam and Tucker eagerly awaiting his arrival on the steps. He transforms back and pulls the mangled mess of gauze out of his pocket so they can retape it around his head. They depart quickly from the neighborhood; Danny's not ready to face his parents again as a human just yet. Soon, but not yet.

Everyone demands to know how it went as soon as they're out of earshot of the house, so he briefly sums up the events in the kitchen. "Actually," he goes on, "it went really well, all things considered. I mean, even though they're gonna be watching me like a hawk from now on, which kinda sucks, and they're gonna want more conversations with Phantom, which also sucks. I think it'll be good in the long run but I'm gonna have to navigate my way through a million tricky situations..." He pauses to consider these things, and a few more complications occur to him. "They're also gonna demand some tests since I was pretty vague about it all, and they're never gonna stop asking questions until I come out with the whole truth…"

A sudden thought strikes him and he stops halfway through crossing the street. "Shit!" he shouts, and Tucker yanks him out of the way of a honking car. "I'm gonna have to do this all over again with Valerie! She's gonna see the scar too! Man, why didn't I think this through more?" he groans. Valerie, Valerie, why didn't he think about Valerie? "Come to think of it," he decides, "this is a nightmare!"

Sam takes a right turn through the neighborhood park and everyone follows. They must be heading to her house. With an mite of exasperation, she says, "Did you ever stop to think that Clockwork was pushing you toward a world where _everyone_ knows your secret?"

"Um, no?" That hadn't occurred to him yet. A wave of nausea sweeps over him at the mere idea of that, and Tucker makes an audible choking noise.

"You're the crazy one who wanted to tell them," Tucker accuses. "I still think we could've gotten around the scar thing with a stylish eye patch. Or a mask. I never understood why you weren't into the whole mask thing. I'm just saying. It would've saved you a lot of grief..."

"Oh my god, Tuck, we've been over this. It's not practical! I'd have to put it on every single time Iㅡ" He stops when he notices Tucker laughing. "Can you be serious?" he deadpans.

On his left, Jazz nudges her brother's arm. Guilt riddles her face, and it dawns on him for the first time that she might be blaming herself for his injury. "Why did you change back during the fight, anyway?" she pesters. "You were totally defenseless, Danny. You wouldn't have gotten hit if you hadn't done that."

Danny shakes his head in disagreement and launches into a quick explanation of his unexpected encounter with Clockwork during the ghost fight, and how he'd been advised to shift back against all logic and reason. "I hate that he never explains himself," Danny complains as they cross yet another street. "Why he's there, what he's fixing. Why does he have to keep me in the dark when it's _my_ life he's messing around with?"

"Maybe the full scope of the problem he's fixing is too complicated for him to give you a brief explanation," Jazz suggests helpfully.

At the intersection Sam stops to jam her fist into the ' _walk'_ button a dozen times. "Maybe you're supposed to figure it out on your own," she offers.

"Maybe he just thinks it's funny."

Danny glares at Tucker, who flashes him a toothy grin. "Yeah well, I'm on thin ice with my parents now," he scowls. "Clockwork better have been right about taking the first step in coming clean to them. I feel like I'm walking a tightrope. There's so many ways I can lose and so few I can win." He sighs, tucking his hands in his pockets as they reach the other side of the road and turn the corner to curve around east side of the city library. "I have no idea what I'm doing."

At the head of the procession, Sam slows until everyone has passed her and then stiffens. "Huh."

Everyone stops to wait for her, Jazz peering around the boys with one eyebrow raised. "What?"

Sam is staring at the library, deep in thought. "Déjà vu."

Just like that, the pensive mood is broken. Tucker and Danny both burst into laughter. "Again?" Danny jokes. "What's that, the twelfth time this week?"

"Laugh all you want," Sam says hotly, flipping them both off. "Déjà vu is a real thing. I've been reading up on all the theoriesㅡ"

"Yeah," Tucker manages through his laughter. "I hear it's caused by the same aliens that make the crop circles."

Danny bites his tongue. A part of him wants to make fun too but honestly he kind of likes when Sam gets all creepy and mystical, and he doesn't want her to stop. It's making him feel better.

"Look guys, I'm really serious about this. It's not just spooky folklore like that other fictional stuff I read, okay? There are real acclaimed scientists that believe in it. Some theoretical physicists think it happens when parallel universes intersect with one another."

"I could see that," Danny relents.

Danny elbows Tucker hard, who finally stops laughing and adjusts his skewed glasses. "Me too, I guess. We _have_ done our fair share of messing with timelines," Tucker concedes.

Jazz can only roll her eyes at the three of them and usher them onward, eager to get out of the hot afternoon sun. They keep walking but Sam is still eyeing the library with that odd look in her eye and Danny can't help but follow her gaze, thinking it must have been some déjà vu to be bothering her this badly.

As he looks, near the top floor something bright flashes outside a window. _What the…?_

What was that?

Looking both ways quickly, he transforms and flies upward despite his friends' confusion at his sudden departure. When he reaches the third story window he peers intently at the empty space just outside it. There, again! Something flashes, like a spider web catching a glint of sunlight. A little transparent string. He narrows his eyes, getting on eye level with the thing, trying to work out what it is. It's only about as long as his hand and fades on both ends into nothing. It pulses with life like some kind of jellyfish. He keeps losing sight of it as it undulates, but he's so captivated by it that he _has_ to know what it is or where it came from. It stirs something faraway, some kind of cold, dark water at the very bottom of his memory well. Something long forgotten.

Gingerly, he pulls the wrappings off his head again, hoping to see the thing a little more clearly. With great care he eases his left eye open. The world swims into view, blurry but definitely there (thank god, he isn't half blind), and in the center of his field of vision the little string collapses in on itself as it finally comes into focus. He gasps as it inverts, moving into some fourth geometrical plane he never realized was there. In rapt awe he follows it as it catches an upward draft, twisting languidly, like a transdimensional butterfly.

On a whim he reaches out to catch it. He closes his hand around it and blood rushes deafeningly through the veins in his ears as he draws his fist close to his chest.

But when he opens his hand again, it's gone.

When he returns to the ground to transform back he can't take his eyes off the library. Jazz's voice emerges from the clamor of traffic. "What is it, Danny?"

Danny curls his fingers over his palm, then away again, staring thoughtfully at his empty hand. "I thought I saw something," he says dreamily. "It was nothing. What were you guys saying?"

Sam picks up where she left off as she wraps the bandages around Danny's head for the third time. "We were talking about déjà vu and what it means in relation alternate realities."

Tucker laughs again, urging them all to continue toward Sam's house. "I don't know about all that. Bring me some hard evidence and I'll back you up, Sammy."

Sam just glares. "I know what I felt," she insists. "I guess I'm not explaining it properly. Time is weird. You think you know how it works and then one day you're standing on the sidewalk somewhere and you're sure this has all happened before, or that maybe it's going to happen again, or that somehow it's... still happening. Somewhere." A small blush colors her cheeks, but she's very insistent. "This one was so strong. Makes me wonder if maybe that feeling happens when I've crossed over into some separate timeline without realizing it. That'd be freaky, wouldn't it?"

Tucker gives a low whistle, stopping at the next street corner to wait as the cars zip through the green light. "Even by your standards that's freaky, Sam."

Jazz presses her hands together, taking this as seriously as she does everything else. "We could always ask Clockwork about it."

Danny breaks his backward gaze at the library to scoff at the idea. "He doesn't give straight answers to questions like that. I can already tell you what he'd say. Some nonsensical metaphor, and then he'd wax philosophical about the tree of life and all its interweaving branches."

Ignoring Danny's sarcastic tone, Sam taps one finger on her jaw. "I wonder which branch we're on?" she wonders. "Since we know Clockwork plays favorites with timelines and all. Do you think there's like… a central one in the middle somewhere? A true reality more real than the rest?"

The light switches over and the walk sign beeps at them encouragingly, but nobody moves. The same tangential idea has just occurred to everyone. _If there is, are we lucky enough to be in that one?_

"Now _there's_ a question for the ages," Tucker says after a long, tense silence. He turns to Danny, nudging him playfully in the side. "What do you think, space cowboy? Are we living in the real world?"

It takes a second. Danny grins as the reference clicks, but then remains behind as everyone jogs across the street, still eyeing the library in his peripheral vision. He can't fight the feeling that something amazing has just slipped through his fingers. Like he missed a chapter in a book. Like the needle just skipped a whole song on a record.

Tucker was joking, but he also struck a vein truth that Danny can't look away from. _It is a question for the ages. Are we living in the real world?_

The green light shifts to yellow then and beyond it he notices the full moon rising over the mountains. Now that's strange. It was in its waxing gibbous phase just yesterday, he's absolutely sure of it. He ticked off the square on his lunar calendar when he got home from the movies late last night.

Still distracted by the discovery, Danny mouths an apology to his friends as traffic begins to move again between them before he can cross. Things always get glitchy when Clockwork comes around, so the moon thing isn't exactly unprecedented. Flexing his hand again subconsciously, he squints at the lunar surface with all its faint craters in view, imagining for a moment an endless recursion of moons spinning around earths across all possible realities, one for every leaf on the tree.

The image is dizzying. So many possible realities, so many forks in the road, so many potential beginnings and dead ends.

But... if he made a mistake today and turned down the wrong road, then Clockwork would have appeared again, to send him back to fix whatever he messed up. He always does.

Maybe he puts too much faith in someone whose choices and powers defy comprehension. But Clockwork has never led him wrong, and Danny trusts him, probably more than he trusts anyone on earth. So even if this _isn't_ the real worldㅡeven if such an optimal outcome does exist and he's been led astray from it down a rugged path to some obscure fringe world on the edge timestreamㅡeven then he trusts in Clockwork's vision. Whichever world he's in, if Clockwork led him here, then it's the right one.

The light cycles on. Danny steps into the intersection, measuring the full moon between his thumb and forefinger and thinking decidedly that there's probably no such thing as reality anyway.

 ** _. . ._**

 ** _The end, the end, the end._**

 ** _. . ._**

* * *

Thanks for reading; extra thanks to all my friends in the phandom. I know I'm super lame and don't come around enough anymore. This is definitely the last major story I'll be writing for this show and I hope everyone who read it enjoyed it! Also yes, that was a nod to the Cowboy Bebop movie at the end. (If you haven't seen Donnie Darko or Cowboy Bebopㅡtwo of the major inspirations for _Nexus_ ㅡyou should definitely give them a go.)

I got a lot of messages pleading for me to post the alternate ending, but once I decided on this one I scrapped the other idea entirely. It never got written (sorry folks)!

The reason I decided on _this_ ending is because it's far more ambiguous and open-ended than the other, and I prefer the option where you guys can interpret the ending for this story. I know I left a metric ton of unanswered questions here, but I wanted it that way. The world is chaos, life is unpredictable, meaning is subjective, and time's only significance is that which we impose on it through the movement of matter and the storage of memory. That's what this story was really about for me. The elusive answer to the mystery of life is different for all of us, and I truly think that whatever conclusion you find at the end of this story is good. If it feels right, then it's right.

The alternate ending would have taken that away and left a lot less up to imagination. But since I know y'all have insatiable curiosity...

 **[[[SPOILER WARNING]]]**

 **Do not read beyond this point if you want to interpret this story how you see fit. Read on if you want to know about the alternate ending (and tangentially, my personal interpretation)** , since I know I'm going to continue getting messages about it until I answer. Ehheheh. (Also, please feel free to message me about this anyway! I am totally up for discussing this; this isn't meant to deter people from contacting me with lingering questions. I will respond!)

 _So. Yes, Danny is essentially Clockwork! Essentially. In a way. The alternate ending would have changed only the final chapter, which would have continued following the 'same' Danny we followed for the majority of the story, as opposed to the 'original' Danny from the past. We would have seen him watching from a third person perspective as the 'original' Danny became 'split timeline' Danny and followed his advice and had that talk with his parents, and then showed the final stages of his ascension into the being that he's always viewed as Clockwork. It wouldn't have changed any of the final plot, just whose eyes we were seeing that last chapter from. You can assume that this DID in fact happen. We just didn't get to see it because we jumped to the 'split timeline' Danny's perspective instead._

 _It was something I desperately wanted to explore, but in the end I knew this ending was the one that fit the narrative. Again, it's about the interpretation. I wanted you guys to be able to decide whatever you wanted based on the evidence provided as opposed to me just presenting you with a neatly wrapped answer. It's funner that way for all of us!_

 _And what's with that strange butterfly at the end, you ask?_

 _Good question. I'd say this whole 'nexus' thing has happened to Danny before. Loads of times. He just doesn't remember because a piece of him breaks off every time, to become what is essentially 'Clockwork,' and unravel the ugly knot in the timeline. But it looks like perhaps he retained a tiny bit of that ability to perceive the extra dimension, here. Maybe that crack under the door opens a little wider every time..._

 _Or maybe not. I dunno. Time is weird. You think you know how it works and then_ ㅡ


End file.
